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UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES. 



" The Way, The Truth and The Life," - - - Cloth, Gilt, $2.00. 
" The Pathway of the Spirit," - Cloth, Gilt, $1.25; Paper, 75 cents. 
" Spiritual Gifts, or True Christian Occultism," - - In preparation. 
" The Law of the Perfect Life," " " 



OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

" The Open Door, or The Secret of Jesus," --'-■» 30 cents. 

" Introduction to the Theosophy of the Christ," (pamphlet), 35 " 

" Christian Theosophy Defined," " 6 " 

" Divinity of Humanity," - " 10 •' 

" Scientific Basis of Mental Healing," - - " 10 " 

Any of the above works sent post free on receipt of price. Address 

E. L. C. DEWEY, 



THE MYSTIC KEY 



TO 



SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION 



AND 



OCCULT MASTERY 



BY 



JOHN HAMLIN DEWEY, M.D. 

AUTHOR OF " CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES," ETC. 



A CONDENSED COURSE OF LESSON HELPS FOR HOME STUDY AND 
PRACTICE IN PSYCHROMETRY, INTUITION, INSPIRATION, SEER- 
SUIP, SPIRITUAL HEALING, ETC., IN CONNECTION WITH SPECIAL 
INSTRUCTION BY CORRESPONDENCE 




PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR 



\^^y 






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Copyrighted, 1892, 
By J. H. DEWEY, M.D. 



All Rights Reserved 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YODK 



NOTICE. 



Since the publication of " The Way, The Truth and 
The Life : a Handbook of Christian Theosophy, Healing 
and Psychic Culture," the author has received numer- 
ous applications for special instruction by mail. Not 
having time for the requisite correspondence, he has 
hitherto been obliged to refuse all such applications. 
Many of these calls, however, have been so urgent, that 
he has been led to devise a plan whereby he now can, 
with the aid of a carefully arranged series of Lesson- 
Helps, meet this demand, and is thus enabled to respond 
to those at a distance desiring his aid in their psychic 
and spiritual development. 

These Lesson-Helps, Dr. Dewey has prepared espec- 
ially for the correspondence course. They give in 
condensed form the essential facts and principles neces- 
sary for an understanding of the special lessons by cor- 
respondence, and make expeditious and successful the 
home study and practice. 

Not being prepared for general use, each lesson will 
be adapted to the individual need of the student receiv- 
ing it. The Lesson-Helps being designed for use only 
as a basis for the more specific instruction of the lessons 
by correspondence, they can be furnished . only to those 



IV NOTICE. 

taking these lessons, and to Dr. Dewey's students who 
are qualified to use them in teaching. 

The object being to help each student to such a degree 
of illumination that he may become a successful teacher 
and helper of others from his own inspiration and ex- 
perience, he is expected to hold both the special les- 
sons and Lesson-Helps as confidential ; not giving them 
out, nor attempting to teach from them without the 
approval of 

THE AUTHOB. 

Ill West Sixtv-eighth Street, New York. 



INTKODUOTOKY. 



An Open Secret oe Transcendent Importance to Man- 
kind, yet Apprehended by Few. 

It is the secret of a stupendous truth, a truth so simple 
that it may be apprehended by the humblest mind, yet 
so mighty, when apprehended and applied, as to bring- 
complete spiritual emancipation and enlightenment to 
the most benighted and depraved soul, and health and 
vigor to the most weakened and diseased body. 

This truth gleams forth in all inspired teaching, but 
was first brought to its full revelation, in the perfect 
demonstration of practical experience in the life and 
work of the Christ. 

It is the sublime yet simple truth that the power 
which regenerates, heals, illuminates, and brings to per- 
fection, is spiritual and of God, not material or of man ; 
a free gift impartially bestowed upon all who are in the 
attitude to receive it, independent of any question of 
merit. It is entirely a matter of understanding and 
motive, or of the proper attitude of mind and heart. 
" By grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not of 
yourselves : it is the gift of God. Not of works lest any 
man should boast." 



VI INTRODUCTORY. 

In forgetting tlieir dependence upon God, men have 
sought through the practice of asceticism, and various 
devices of human wisdom and will-worship, to attain 
divine illumination ; but "It is not in man that walketh 
to direct his steps." " Be not deceived, my beloved 
brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is 
from above, and cometh down from the Father of 
lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow 
that is cast by turning." 

Spiritual illumination is the result of the imme- 
diate OPERATION OF THE DlVLNE SPIRIT IN AND UPON THE 
HUMAN SPIRIT, SECURED BY THE CO-OPERATIVE DESIRE 
AND RECEPTIVE ATTITUDE OF .THE INDIVIDUAL — the atti- 
tude of dependence, humility, and faith. 

" In God we live, move, and have our being." All 
the processes of creation are the immediate result of the 
universal activity of the omnipresent life of God in na- 
ture. And these operations of the Divine Energy in 
the evolution or development and activities of life, are 
everywhere spontaneous up to the birth of man ; that 
is, there is no power of self-determinate choice and vo- 
lition in the kingdoms below man, whereby an indi- 
vidual plant or animal can voluntarily co-operate with 
the power of life to effect any given predetermined re- 
sult in its own organism. 

The processes of life throughout the physical world 
are, we repeat, spontaneous and automatic ; but these 
spontaneous processes culminated in man ; man being 
the ultimate product of the life of God in nature. This 
makes him potentially a reproduction of nature, and 
specifically a child of God. The potentialities of the 



INTRODUCTORY. Vll 

universe and the very nature and attributes of the Eter- 
nal Father are focalized and engermed in his essential 
being. The further and higher evolution of life is, 
therefore, to be a spiritual evolution — the evolution of 
divine attributes and potencies in humanity itself. But 
with the coming forth of man as a spiritual being and 
child of God, came also a new and potent factor of life — 
the self-determinate factor of the human will. 

The will, rooted in the personal life, of necessity co- 
operates with and intensifies the automatic processes of 
vitality in its own organism — God's life operating in that 
organism — or antagonizes, deranges, and depresses them. 

What is thus true of the attitude of the will, or mind and 
heart, toward the processes of the life of God in the body, 
is even more vitally true concerning those of the soul. 

The higher evolution of man as a moral and responsi- 
ble being endowed with freedom of choice and action, 
is absolutely determined by his own attitude of will 
toward the Divine power that worketh in him. 

The Spirit of God it will thus be seen becomes 
specifically operative in and upon the spirit of man, 
for his illumination, only through his active co- 
operation — the co-operation of an earnest desire, 
will, and faith. The mere passive desire and willing 
consent is not enough. 

Absolute faith in God, the spirit of obedience to the 
law of divine unity and inspiration, and an all-absorbing- 
desire after God, that will not stop short of full fruition, 
is the specific attitude which opens man, soul and body, 
to the regenerating or quickening and transforming 
operations of the Divine Spirit. 



Vlll INTRODUCTORY. 

The awakening and exercise of this faith, spirit, de- 
sire, and attitude, is the preparatory and co-operative 
work which belongs to man. However long delayed, 
slow, and imperfect this work on his part may be, the 
immediate operation of Divine power in and upon the 
soul and body is unfailing, quick, and perfect, to the 
full extent of the individual co-operation. 

Experience proves that in this work of preparation 
and co-operation, or of attaining and holding the proper 
attitude of mind and heart, the vast majority of people 
need the helping sympathy and counsel of such as have 
had personal experience in attainment. 

The object of these Lesson-Helps, with the accom- 
panying correspondence, is to open the understanding, 
touch the heart, awaken faith, and give the needed help 
to all who seek it at the author's hands. 

A "Word to the Student. — While pursuing this 
course of lessons, the student is expected to accept, pro- 
visionally, the fundamental statements presented, as the 
basis of interpretation ; and not to modify the obvious 
meaning by any other standard. 

It is of the first importance that teacher and student 
work from the basis of a common understanding, and 
put the same meaning into the expressions used. 

Both the method adopted and the results aimed at 
and promised in the following course, are based upon 
the premises laid down, and unless all differing views 
and conceptions are put aside, and these accepted for 
the time as the working hypothesis, the course should 
not be entered upon. This condition is imperative. 



THE BASIC CONCEPTION 

THE NECESSARY STANDARD OF FAITH AND EFFORT. 



1. Every thinking mind has some more or less clearly 
defined conception of that system of things of which we 
are a living part, and to which we are thus vitally re- 
lated. A man's conception of God and the world deter- 
mines his understanding of the nature of his relations 
to the laws of life and being, and so his attitude under 
these relations. 

The nature and character of his basic conception is, 
therefore, a matter of fundamental importance, since it 
determines largely the character and results of all efforts 
at advancement. 

2. The right attitude under the laws of life and being- 
is necessary for perfect results ; and this is possible only 
on the basis of a true conception of the constitution of 
things and of our relations thereto. 

3. The conception or understanding which a man 
thus holds, determines his ideal of possible attainment ; 
and this ideal will constitute both the basis and measure 
of his faith and effort. 

4. We have the record of at least one of the human 



2 LESSON-HELPS. 

race who had the true basis, and the attitude which 
opened to him the full freedom of the perfect life. This 
admitted, we have in him, " who is called Christ," the 
perfect Teacher and Exemplar for all. 

5. The key to his successful interpretation and atti- 
tude, was his conception of God. God, to his under- 
standing, was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent 
Spirit, immanent in nature and man as the indwelling 
life of both, yet transcending the universe in and through 
which He is manifest, as the human spirit transcends 
the body. 

6. Let us then unite on the basis of this Christ con- 
ception and interpretation, and through careful consider- 
ation seek to realize all that this fundamental postulate 
involves. In so doing, we too shall be enabled to take 
the attitude and secure the results which so distinguished 
the Master. 

"god is spikit." 

7. That in which the world and all things and beings 
are embosomed, upheld, and sustained, is Spirit. 

8. The all-animating Life, creative Energy, sustaining 
Power, and directing Intelligence of the universe, is 
Spirit ; and Spirit, in this conception, constitutes Orig- 
inal, Supreme, and Absolute Being. 

9. To the luminous soul of the Master, God was not only 
above the world as transcendent, self-existent, and uncon- 
ditioned Being, but was in His world as its life giving 
Spirit, clothing the grass of the field, feeding the fowls 
of the air, and holding the life and destiny of man and 
all things in the most bountiful and perfect providence. 



LESSON-HELPS. 



THE MACKOCOSM. 



10. Recognizing all the processes of creation as the 
manifestation or activity of the living God in His world, 
we must regard the Universe as an organism in which 
Deific life and Divine power are regnant in every part. 

11. This gives us then, for our basic conception, the 
Universe, which philosophers call the Macrocosm or 
great World, as an organism, of which man being a re- 
production in miniature, is called the microcosm or little 
world — " In little all the sphere." 

12. As an organism, the Universe or Macrocosm is 
threefold ; corresponding with the body, soul, and spirit 
in man. 

First, the outer physical world of materiality, form, 
and phenomena. 

Second, the ethereal substance and constructive forces 
of the inner, occult world, which determine physical 
form and phenomena, and which, in organized activities, 
constitute the soul of the world ; and in the infinite va- 
riety of individualized expression, " the soul of things." 

Third, the innermost and transcendent realm of Uni- 
versal, Impersonal, and Spiritual Being, the all-embrac- 
ing sphere of the Divine and Absolute — the kingdom of 
God — in whose omnipresent Spirit all atoms, worlds, 
and beings are held in one united and perfect whole, 
giving to the universe a divine aim and purpose, and or- 
daining all things to the ends of wisdom and use. 

13. That which is called substance, of which worlds 
and organisms are composed (both outer and inner), ex- 



4 LESSON-HELPS. 

ists in infinite gradation from the state called crude mat- 
ter, up to the most refined and subtile condition of im- 
palpable ether. Within, behind, and above this, is that 
imparticled and Ineffable Essence or living Spirit, which 
constitutes the eternal and formless Substance of change- 
less and Absolute Being, in and by whom all things are. 

14. On the one hand we have the substance of which 
worlds and organisms are produced, rising in gradation 
from the physical formations of the material world, up to 
the interior and ever- expanding zones of celestial spheres, 
and the ethereal forms of the spiritual beings which in- 
habit them ; on the other hand we have the inner organ- 
izing forces, within and behind which is the omnipresent 
and creative Spirit that produces ; the Divine Artisan 
and Director — all things being thus inter-related and 
one in Him. 

15. The organic activities manifest in the processes of 
creation and providence, we call the soul of the world, of 
which the informing and controlling Spirit is God. All 
things, however seemingly insignificant in position and 
function, are, therefore, embraced in His eternal purpose 
and providence. " The eye cannot say unto the hand, I 
have no need of thee ; nor again the hand to the feet, I 
have no need of you." 

16. Each distinct element or compound has its distin- 
guishing properties or characteristic attributes, derived 
immediately from God, which constitute its individual 
life and determining soul ; thus it will be seen there is a 
soul of things, and of worlds, as well as of beings. 

17. In the universe as an organism, every atom or 
combination of atoms is held in the all-penetrating and 



LESSON-HELPS. O 

all-embracing life of God ; hence, while there is constant 
change and transformation going on in the processes of 
creation and dissolution, there is in reality no such thing 
as death. That which we call death is only a change in 
the relation of elements and forces, and applies to the 
disintegration of physical forms : never to spiritual or- 
ganisms. 

" There is no Death ! The dust we tread 
Shall change beneath the summer showers 
To golden grain or mellow fruit, 
Or rainbow -tinted flowers. 

" The granite rocks disorganize 
To feed the hungry moss they bear : 
The forest leaves drink daily life 
From out the viewless air." 

In the dissolution of physical bodies and the transpo- 
sition of material elements, we have the active mani- 
festation of a living power. As the essential properties 
of matter, whether as primary elements or compound 
substances, are derived from the all-permeating and in- 
sphering life of God, there can be no positively dead or 
inert substance. 

CONSCIOUSNESS, VS. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

18. Consciousness being a specific property of soul- 
life, there must be a degree of consciousness attending 
the activity of every element, thing, or being. Self- 
consciousness, however, being the product of organized 



6 LESSON-HELPS. 

and developed mentality, belongs only to self-determi- 
nate beings ; hence, while consciousness is a universal 
attribute or condition of soul-life, self-consciousness is 
possible only to special conditions of soul-life. 

19. In the order of evolution, man was the first form 
of life to come to self-consciousness, because the pro- 
cesses of creation culminating in him, make him a 
reproduction of the Macrocosm, and thus a self-determi- 
nate, self-conscious, and indestructible being and per- 
sonality ; a child of God, and, therefore, himself a god 
in embryo. 

20. God, as we have seen, is the all in all of things, 
yet we must remember that the all of things do not con- 
stitute God. Spiritual, Infinite, and Absolute Being, 
He is infinitely more than the things and beings that 
exist in Him. " There is one God and Father- of alL 
who is above all, and through all, and in you all." 

21. It is in the transcendency of His Spiritual Being 
that God is the Father of human spirits ; and it is as in- 
dividualized and embodied spiritual beings — individual- 
ized through embodiment — that men are children of 
God. 

22. This Christ-conception of the universe as an 
organism which God is both immanent in and transcend- 
ent over, and as such the Father of men, is fundamental 
and all-embracing; and should be dwelt upon until it 
becomes vital to us, as it was to the Master. It will 
then become the fulcrum of a mighty lever for the uplift- 
ing and expansion of the soul's life, consciousness, and 
powers, and thus outwork the most stupendous results in 
personal experience, as illustrated in our great Exem- 



LESSON-HELPS. 



plar. That mighty lever is the correlative conception of 
man as a microcosm and thus a child of God. 



MAN THE MICROCOSM. 

23. Man, in this conception, is an epitome or repro- 
duction in miniature of the threefold Macrocosm, each 
distinct sphere of which has its complete correspondence 
and representation in him. He is, therefore, as a micro- 
cosm something more than a child or miniature repro- 
duction of what we call Nature, even as God the Father 
is more than Nature. He is specifically the child of 
God, a spiritual seed-germ of infinite possibilities, hold- 
ing in the mysterious depths of his essential and inde- 
structible being, the potentialities of the universe ; the 
nature and attributes of the eternal Father. 

24. It will thus be seen that our conception or under- 
standing of the nature and character of God, necessarily 
determines our conception of the nature and possibili- 
ties of man as the child of God. This in turn gives our 
standard of possible attainment, and so constitutes the 
basis of individual faith and effort. It behooves each 
one, then, to give his basic conception the most pro- 
found and prayerful consideration, since that which he 
adopts will be the key to his individual attainment ; 
because the necessary basis of his faith and effort. Men 
do not rise above, nor seek that which is above their own 
ideals. 

25. If this Christ basis be the true one, we cannot 
possibly hold too high a conception of the essential nat- 
ure and possibilities of man as a spiritual being and 



8 LESSON-HELPS. 

child of God, nor of his inherent capacity for immedi- 
ate divine realization and spiritual supremacy on earth. 
Let us then seriously consider the nature of these tran- 
scendent possibilities, and also the law and condition of 
their fruition on the firm basis of this conception. 

26. First : Man as a microcosm, is a complete repro- 
duction in miniature of the threefold Macrocosm. All 
the essential attributes of God, and the elemental forces 
and properties of His world, are focalized and repre- 
sented in organic function and in their corresponding 
relations in his threefold being — body, soul, and spirit. 
The elements and harmonious movements of the physi- 
cal world have their representation and correspondence 
in his body, the mighty occult powers and constructive 
forces of the inner world are organized in his soul ; while 
the very nature, substance and attributes of Deity are 
focalized and engermed in his spirit. The integral de- 
velopment, or the unfolding and harmonious adjustment 
of all the powers of his complex being, will, therefore, 
bring all these to organic activity, and make him god- 
like in being and character, perfect even as his Father 
in heaven is perfect. 

27. It is because the transcendental powers of his 
deeper spiritual nature have not been brought forth to 
their rightful organic activity and supremacy, that man 
has remained the imperfect being that he is. 

28. The development and activity of the soul's powers 
on the plane of the senses, or in relation to the outward 
world through the senses, to the neglect of their corre- 
sponding activity on the spiritual plane in specific rela- 
tion to God and the things of the Spirit, has led to ab- 



LESSON-HELPS. 9 

sorption in the sensuous life, and that perversion of. 
character, and dominance of the selfish spirit, that 
mystical writers call " the fall of man." The religions 
of the world have mostly been blind attempts to recover 
the lost balance. These misguided efforts have been 
based upon an imperfect understanding of the nature of 
man. The perfect way of this recovery, based upon the 
true understanding, was first presented by the Christ ; 
and this has been grossly misapprehended and misap- 
plied by the Church that bears his name. 

29. From the incarnation of so much of the Divine 
Spirit as is differentiated and individualized through 
psychic and physical embodiment in man, his self-con- 
sciousness is evolved and the sense of personal identity 
established ; first, on the external plane of sense-relation, 
and afterward on the interior and higher planes of the 
psychic and spiritual relations. 

30. The informing, unitizing, and life-giving spirit in 
man, is the very Effluence of God, making his inmost 
and essential nature spiritual and divine, and holds po- 
tentially the attributes of the Godhead, with an inherent 
capacity for rising through unity with the Father into 
the full self-conscious realization of the God-life. But 
this unity with God must be the self-determined choice 
and act of man, in putting himself under the immediate 
influence of the Father's Spirit. He must will to do the 
Father's will, if he would know the reality and power of 
the God-life. 

31. It is because the individualized spirit and personal 
life are the offspring of God, and exist within the all- 
embracing sphere of the infinite Father-Mother, that 



10 LESSON-HELPS. 

unity of the human will with the Divine, is the necessary 
condition of rising into this realization. This funda- 
mental truth has been insisted upon by all inspired 
teachers, and was especially emphasized by the Christ. 

32. God as transcendent Spiritual Being is the su- 
preme and absolute ruler of the Macrocosm, and so man, 
as the child of God, through unity with the Father, 
must and will become the absolute ruler of his own de- 
pendent organism, and of his environment ; because this 
lifts him into the full self-conscious realization of the 
spiritual transcendency of his being. Careful reflection 
will make all this apparent and self-evident to every un- 
biased mind. 

33. How this stupendous truth is to be grasped and 
practically applied, will best be seen by considering, 

Second : That man, as a microcosm and threefold 
being, holds three specific and distinct spheres of rela- 
tionship to the Macrocosm, differentiated each from the 
others by discrete degrees: an outer, an inner, and an 
inmost ; making three corresponding planes of conscious- 
ness normal and legitimate to him — the sensuous, the 
psychical, and the spiritual. 

34. On the sense plane, man is held in intimate and 
vital relation and communication with the outer and phy- 
sical world through the body. Of this vital contact and 
relation he is made sensible or self-conscious by the 
activity of the five physical senses, or rather by the soul's 
activity in and through the physical organs of sense. 
The power of sensation and sense perception originate 
not in the organ, but in the soul that animates it. 

35. On the interior or psychic plane, he is held through 



LESSON-HELPS. 11 

his psychic organism in still more vital and intimate re- 
lation and communication with the inner occult world 
and soul of things. Of this interior relation and direct 
communication, he becomes self-conscious by the open- 
ing and exercise of the sixth or psychic sense, which, 
when fully developed and active, constitutes the psy- 
chometric or soul-measuring power. 

36. On the inmost or spiritual plane of his being, man 
is held in the most interiorly vital and indestructible re- 
lation and communication with the very life and Being 
of God. Of this inmost and divine relationship and one- 
ness of nature and life with the Father, he also becomes 
self-conscious through the opening and activity of the 
seventh or God-sense. 

37. The opening of the seventh sense, and the develop- 
ment of the spiritual or God-consciousness, is wholly a 
matter of personal chokfe and volition, and is effected 
by the prayer of faith — the centering of attention and de- 
sire in confidence upon the Father — and by the final un- 
reserved consecration of the personal will to the will of 
the Father. Man thus opens his life to the quickening 
vibrations of the Divine Spirit, and puts himself under 
its kindling and transforming power. He thereby co- 
operates with God in his life, and thus becomes self- 
centered in his own divinity as the child of God, and 
enters into self-conscious oneness of life with the 
Father. 

38. When the spiritual consciousness is thus perma- 
nently established, the feeling of organic limitation im- 
posed by the sense-consciousness is completely overcome 
in the realization of spiritual supremacy and freedom. 



12 LESSON-HELPS. 

39. In this new sense of power and freedom born of 
the higher consciousness, the opening, development, 
and perfection of the psychometric sense and perception 
become a matter of easy and speedy achievement. If, 
however, this is attempted before attaining the spiritual 
consciousness, the sense of organic limitation and the 
bias of personal prejudice and desire will stand in the 
way of immediate and perfect results. The reason for 
this will be given further on ; also an explanation of the 
nature of the sixth sense and the psychometric power — 
the grandest power of the soul. 

40. Let us say in passing, however, that this spiritually 
quickened and sustained psychometric power enables 
man to enter at will into direct communication with the 
inner life of men and things, and read with unerring cer- 
tainty their history, character, status and condition — 
moral and physical — and thus^know them as he knows 
his own experiences. The secrets of the interior, occult, 
or soul- world, the actual states of men and things hidden 
from outward observation, become as direct and easy 
matters of perception and acquaintance through the psy- 
chometric power, as are the commonest things of exter- 
nal perception through the senses. 



41. Very few are practically aware, or self-conscious, 
of these interior, transcendental powers and correspond- 
ing planes of relation to the Cosmos. Nevertheless, 
these relations exist and are vital to the soul, being es- 
tablished by the very process of individualization and 
embodiment through which man comes to self-conscious- 



LESSON-HELPS. 13 

ness on tlie outer plane of the senses. He could not 
have been brought forth a microcosm without them ; 
and because they exist and are vital, there is a corre- 
sponding interior consciousness attending them. 

42. Man comes to self-consciousness on these higher 
planes, by the opening of the inner senses and the co- 
ordination of the self-consciousness of the outward man 
with the inner transcendental activities. The opening 
of these inner senses is effected, as already intimated, 
by the centering of attention and desire in confidence 
upon the things and interests of these higher planes, 
and is wholly a matter of self-determinate choice and 
action. Absorption in the things of the soul - world 
opens the sixth sense to the psychic plane of the mind's 
activity ; and supreme desire after God and absorption 
in the things of the Spirit, opens the seventh sense to 
the kingdom of God, and the soul to the sphere of 
divine communion and fellowship. 

43. There is a general consciousness attending all the 
activities of the personal life, whether on the physical, or 
interior, psychic, and spiritual planes ; yet man is spe- 
cifically self-conscious only on that plane upon which his 
attention and desires are for the time centered. 

44. It is because the attention and desires are so fully 
centered upon and absorbed in the things of the sensu- 
ous life, that man is not self-conscious in the activities 
of the higher planes of his relationship. He is not yet 
awakened to the recognition of them and the vital activ- 
ities they involve. 

45. Self-consciousness being first spontaneously de- 
veloped on the sense-plane, must be carried over to the 



14 LESSON-HELPS. 

higher planes by the voluntary direction of attention and 
desire in faith, through the awakening of an interest in 
the things which belong to these planes. The higher 
activities and experiences are thus brought to self- 
realization, and become co-ordinated with the sense 
experiences of the external man ; or rather those of the 
outer become co-ordinated with and interpreted by those 
of the inner and higher. 

46. To enter confidently upon this work in the cer- 
tainty of success, the attention must be fully aroused to 
these higher possibilities, the conviction of their reality 
fastened upon the mind, and an earnest desire awak- 
ened for their realization. This is best effected by a 
careful unbiased study of these higher relations and 
possibilities, as illustrated in the experience of those 
who have realized them. 

47. Man must earnestly desire a thing before he can 
arouse his will to that degree of energy which com- 
pels the action or attitude necessary to secure it. AVill 
is the expression of desire in an effort to secure 
the thing desired ; and the energy of will is in propor- 
tion to the intensity of the desire which prompts the 
effort. 

48. Before an earnest, persistent desire can be awak- 
ened for things above ordinary experience, a firm faith 
in their reality and desirability must be established. 
This accomplished, the focalization of attention in con- 
templation on the things of faith until their supreme 
importance is realized, will awaken the active desire and 
energy of will necessary to commit the whole man in 
confidence to the working of that divine power which 



LESSON-HELPS. 15 

brings the realization. This is the needful work of 
preparation for all who would enter into this high ex- 
perience. 

"the first shall be last and the last first." 

49. The spiritual plane should be the first sought and 
desired, because it is the central and highest, and when 
realized, subordinates and holds all activities to the law 
of the perfect life. When this is effected, and the ex- 
ternal man and the sense-consciousness are fully ad- 
justed to and co-ordinated with the spiritual conscious- 
ness, the sixth sense is spontaneously opened, and the 
soul becomes practically self-conscious on the three 
planes at once, and may then concentrate its activities 
on either plane at will. This requires perfect control 
of attention and desire, which is attained only through 
the permanent establishment of the spiritual conscious- 
ness. 

50. Man is self-centered and permanently self-con- 
scious only in that sphere of relations which hold the 
treasures of his heart, the attractions of which constitute 
the spring of his motives, ambitions, and incentives to 
action. 

51. When, therefore, he becomes self -centered in God, 
and so in his own divinity, through the permanent estab- 
lishment of the spiritual consciousness, all that is Avithin 
him becomes subordinated thereto, and he is made self- 
conscious on the three planes of his relations, by their 
co-ordinated activities in his mind and heart. He is 
then at one with himself, at one with God, and so at one 



16 LESSON-IIELPS. 

with the world, men, and all things, in God. This is the 
true and normal life — the at-onement which the Christ 
came and wrought to establish. 

52. Having contemplated God as Spiritual and Trans- 
( cendent Being enthroned in and over the Macrocosm, and 

man as the child of God also a spiritual and transcendent 
being, enthroned in and over the microcosm, let us now 
consider the 

OUTER AND INNEE WOELDS, 

and more specifically man's relation to each. 

53. As the material world is external to the body, and 
its forms objective to sense-perception, so the soul world 
is exterior to the soul or psychic organism, and its con- 
tents also practically objective to the psychometric sense 
and perception. But the innermost and transcendent 
sphere or realm of Spirit — the Being and kingdom of 
God — is inward to the soul, the infinite within, and can 
be apprehended and realized only as such. " The king- 
dom of God cometh not with observation. Neither 
shall they say, Lo here ! or, lo there ! for, behold, the 
kingdom of God is within you." 

54. The sphere of the Divine and Absolute must, to 
the individual soul, remain forever a subjective realm 
within, behind, and underneath, permeating yet inspher- 
ing all beings, things, and worlds. 

55. God, and " the things of the Spirit of God," can 
never become objects of external perception, though they 
may be feebly represented to the spiritual vision in sym- 
bolic figures. They are known only through self-con- 



LESSON-HELPS. 17 

scious union with them in spirit. They are to be in- 
wardly realized, not externally perceived. 

56. In the soul's self-conscious activity on the psychic 
plane, the psychometric act is twofold : first, that of in- 
ward feeling, second, of perception, though often, be- 
fore the power is fully developed, the first factor only is 
realized. 

57. On the spiritual plane, the soul enters into self- 
conscious communion and fellowship with God, by an 
inward realization through that supreme affection of the 
heart which yields all personal activity and desire to the 
sway of the Divine Love, and finds its full satisfaction in 
the realization of unity with the Father's will. 

58. The physical senses open outwardly to nature and 
the external of things, and the psychometric sense to the 
inner side or soul of things, yet exterior to the soul it- 
self ; but the spiritual nature and its divine receptive 
seventh sense open inwardly to God, the infinite depths 
and heights of eternal and limitless Being. 

59. While, therefore, the physical and occult worlds 
are the legitimate fields of human knowledge, activity, 
and achievement, and to be fully mastered, the kingdom 
of God is the ever within and transcendent, into which 
man can self-consciously enter and become active, only 
through the recognition of and glad subordination to the 
eternal supremacy of the Father's Being and govern- 
ment. 

60. The spirit in man is the ground-work of his exist- 
ence, and constitutes his essential being. By it he is in- 
wardly united in the most vital and organic oneness 
with the life and Being of the Father. When through 



18 LESSON-HELPS. 

reconciliation of will he becomes self-conscious of this 
union with God, it becomes the well-spring of eternal 
and incorruptible life, an unsealed fountain within the 
soul of perennial vigor and immortal youth, and, as ex- 
ternally expressed, an ever-unfolding power of knowl- 
edge, mastery, and achievement. " There is a spirit in 
man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them 
understanding." God is ever giving Himself to, and 
working in and through the life of His child, to the de- 
gree with which the love and will of the child are one 
with His. 

61. Man becomes self-conscious and self-centered in 
his own divinity by entering into voluntary unity of will 
with the Father, and centering his affections upon God 
and the things of the Spirit of God — the treasures of 
love and wisdom which that Spirit alone reveals. " Eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
into the heart of man the things which God hath pre- 
pared for them that love him. But God hath revealed 
them unto us by his Spirit : for the Spirit searcheth all 
things, yea, the deep things of God." " The natural 
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for 
they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned." 

62. Man is first individualized and becomes estab- 
lished in his own self-conscious personal identity, 
through his relations to and contact with other person- 
alities and things, in a world external to himself. Hence, 
the physical and psychical worlds and his specific rela- 
tions to them as an external environment, were a ne- 
cessity to his individual existence ; and for a field of 



LESSON-HELPS. 19 

activity and achievement in the development and exer- 
cise of his powers and the perfection of his being as a 
personal identity. 

63. When, however, his self-consciousness is awakened 
to the realization of his spiritual nature and immediate 
relationship with the All-Father, who is impersonal and 
universal Being, he is at once universalized in his 
sympathies. Under his relation as an individual to the 
external world of personalities and things, he becomes 
through unity with the Father, impersonal and impartial 
in his attitude toward them. 

64. In the individualization and primary development 
of the personal ego in his self-conscious relations to the 
world of externals, before the spiritual consciousness is 
opened, man realizes only his own personality as dis- 
tinct from, and in a sense opposed to, other personalities 
and things, and feels an interest in others only as they 
can be made to minister to his supposed necessities or 
pleasures. Such is the personal ego of the natural man, 
in contra-distinction to the impersonal ego of the spirit- 
ual man. The first is awakened and developed under 
the limitations and restraints of sense relations, and 
the laws of the animal life, which is selfism, in which 
as a personal ego man is self-centered ; his own will 
and personal desire being the law of his life to the 
full extent of his ability to indulge them. The latter 
is awakened and enthroned in the freedom and su- 
premacy of the spiritual life, by self-conscious unity 
and fellowship with the Father in the divine perfection 
and universality of his Being, in which as an imper- 
sonal ego, man becomes self centered; the Divine Will 



20 LESSON-HELPS. 

and Purpose in all things being henceforth the law of 
his life. 

65. It will thus be seen that specific personal rela- 
tions and activities on both the physical and psychic 
planes, are a primary necessity, without which man 
could not have an individual existence ; and that for the 
perpetuity of that existence in higher spheres, an exter- 
nal world of environment and personal relations will 
forever remain a necessity however ethereal and spiritu- 
alized that environment or sphere may be. 

66. It will also be seen that self-conscious union with 
God and the realization of spiritual and impersonal 
being, while holding specific relations with personalities 
and things, is an equal necessity to the perfection of man 
as an individual ; as by it he becomes self-centered in his 
own divinity, in conscious oneness with the Father, and 
so an impersonal ego going forth in impartial ministry 
and service. 

67. The personal ego of the natural man must give 
place to the impersonal ego of the spiritual man, before 
the true and normal life of a son of God and brother of 
men can be realized on earth. 

68. The Divine wisdom and goodness are thus clearly 
manifest in the necessary limitations with which the 
All-Father in His gracious providence has hedged about 
the activities of the personal ego and the selfish life. 

69. Man is not ready for absolute freedom, or to be 
a law unto himself, until he is one with the spirit of all 
law and harmony, or in unity with the Divine will and 
purpose in all things. But, on the contrary, he cannot 
come into this unity with the Divine will and iDurpose — 



LESSON-HELPS. 21 

the personal ego giving place to the impersonal ego — 
without entering into perfect freedom ; because he is 
not only one with the spirit of all law, but one with the 
Law- Giver in and over all things. He is then a law 
unto himself because the incarnation of law, order, and 
harmony. 

70. The impersonal ego or twice-bom individual, self- 
centered in his own divinity as a son of God, goes forth 
into the world to fulfil the Divine will and purjDose in 
his relations to the world. By changing his position or 
center of motive from the personal to the impersonal ego, 
man has not thereby changed his relations to the world, 
but simply his attitude toward the world under these re- 
lations, by which he gains his victory over it. He is 
henceforth in the world, yet not of the world ; on the 
earth, yet above or master of its conditions. He dwells 
and moves among men morally above the power of temp- 
tation and sin, and pL^sically above contagion and dis- 
ease. He is held by this self-conscious oneness with the 
Divine and Absolute, above the power of all external 
conditions to disturb his peace and health in God ; and 
will no more be brought into bondage to any form of 
external condition or environment. Being self-con- 
sciously divine, the son of God in unity with the Father, 
he goes forth conquering and to conquer ; the master of 
life and destiny. Consciously the possessor and master 
of all things, in the Father, he goes forth not to be min- 
istered unto but to minister, and give his life to the 
work of universal redemption. 

71. This condition is reached by laying down all the 
activities and desires of the personal ego — denial of self — 



22 LESSON-HELPS. 

that the will and purpose of the Father may be fulfilled, 
which is the governing motive of the impersonal ego, or 
of a soul at one with God in the realization of its own 
divine nature and sonship. 

72. The call for this divine realization is never the 
demand of the personal ego, but the stirrings of the im- 
personal ego in response to the Father's voice in the 
soul, calling for the love and loyalty of His child, saying, 
" Son, daughter, give me thine heart." 

73. The personal ego or natural man would, indeed, 
gladly accept and even seek union with divine power for 
the success of his own will, ambitions, and purposes ; but 
the natural man never voluntarily and gladly lays these 
down, that the will of the Father may be fulfilled irre- 
spective of all personal considerations. This is the atti- 
tude and motive of the impersonal ego or spiritual man, 
which, happily, lives deep down in every human soul, by 
which that soul is in its inner nature the child of 
God. 

74. It is then in the power of everyone to respond to 
the divine call within, and will to be henceforth true 
and loyal to the Father, and thus co-operate with Him 
in outworking the royal destiny He has designed and 
provided for all His children. 

75. For man to be one with the Father, and be guided 
by His wisdom, this must become the motive and incen- 
tive to every desire and act, since it is this only which 
constitutes that state of oneness. 

76. In all mystical writings, the fall of angels and men 
from a state of innocence and holiness or unity with 
God, has been attributed to the setting up of the per- 



LESSON-HELPS. 23 

sonal will and forgetting or ignoring dependence upon 
God. 

77. There are but two centers of motive and inspira- 
tion possible to man. One is that of the personal ego 
whose center is self, and whose inspiration is self-love ; 
the other, that of the impersonal ego whose center is 
God, and whose inspiration is the Father's love. The 
will is related equally to both ; and the soul has the 
power of choice, and commits itself to either, at will. 
One seeks self-aggrandizement, the fulfilment of per- 
sonal desire and ambition, even to the disadvantage of 
another's good ; the other seeks to fulfil the Divine will 
and purpose, and under the inspiration of the Father's 
love, with his own, works impersonally and impartially 
for the good of all. It is from this center of motive and 
inspiration that all true mastery and divine achievement 
are accomplished. " Choose ye this day whom ye will 
serve." 

78. All power of life is derived from the spirit within, 
from which all men draw for noble use, or misuse ; 
but the limitation with which the activities of the per- 
sonal ego are hedged in, prevents unlimited appropriation 
to evil ends. To the soul at one with God, seeking only 
to fulfil the Father's purpose, there is no limitation save 
that of the appropriating power. The supply is as limit- 
less and exhaustless as the Being of God. 

79. Men with favorable temperament, may, with con- 
centration of effort, under a vaulting ambition, rise to 
eminence and distinction among men through develop- 
ment of mind power on both the sensuous and the psychic 
planes ; but the limitations of human weakness attend all 



24 LESSON-HELPS. 

such success, and sooner or later bring decay of power. 
All permanent achievement, true advancement, and en- 
during triumph come through unity with the Divine. 
True spiritual illumination and unerring guidance de- 
pend upon the opening of the spiritual consciousness ; 
and this is effected only through self-conscious unity 
with the Father in will and purpose. 

PSYCHOMETEY. 

80. The external senses originate in the psychic or- 
ganism, and have a psychic as well as physical power of 
action, hence are capable when closed externally, of be- 
ing awakened to activity on the interior and psychic 
plane. Somnambulism, both natural and induced, is the 
demonstration of this. This interior activity once fully 
developed, however, both the psychic and physical sense 
functions may act in conjunction in the normal waking 
state, as thousands of experiments have proven, though 
in such cases the physical action is necessarily held in 
abeyance to the psychic. 

81. The five senses, when thus opened internally, com- 
bine on the psychic plane in one all-inclusive analytic 
action which constitutes the sixth sense. This sixth or 
psychic sense will be perfect or imperfect, according as 
all the senses or only a portion of them are brought into 
full psychic activity at once. If there is introversion of 
sight only, we have clairvoyance ; if of hearing, we have 
clair-audience ; and so of each sense, and these results 
will be partial or complete according to the degree of de- 
velopment in their psychic actiou. 



LESSON-HELPS. 25 

82. When all the senses are awakened to full psychic 
activity on the interior plane, they constitute in their 
combined action the psychometric or soul-measuring 
power. All imperfect exhibitions of this power are due 
to partial development in the subject. It has thus been 
spontaneously active in varying degrees of development 
in thousands, and may be cultivated to a reliable action 
in all. 

83. This sixth sense, when fully established and its 
psychometric power developed, is the organic basis 
(under the soul's relation to the Divine and Spiritual) 
of intuition, inspiration, seership, and occult mastery, or 
" Spiritual Gifts." 

81. The mere opening of the psychic sense, and the 
development and exercise of the psychometric power in 
and of itself, is but the focalization of the mind's activity 
on the interior and psychic plane, irrespective of the mo- 
tive that prompts the action, and is not necessarily a step 
in a true spiritual development or divine realization. 
The psychic realm as w T ell as the physical is external to 
the soul, and like the physical is a field for the exercise 
of the soul's powers, whatever be the motive. The spir- 
itual plane, on the other hand, the sphere of divine com- 
munion and inspiration, opens inwardly and unites the 
soul with God in the fathomless depths and heights of 
its own spiritual being. 

85. The opening of this sphere to self-consciousness is 
emphatically a question of motive ; and is possible only 
through union with God, in the laying down of the per- 
sonal will for the fulfilment of the Father's will ; the 
personal ego of the natural man thus giving place to the 



26 LESSON-HELPS. 

impersonal ego of the spiritual man, which is the true 
child of the Father. 

86. Many have supposed that the development of the 
psychic powers, the various experiences of mediumship, 
etc., were evidences of some degree of spirituality, or de- 
velopment of the spiritual nature. It will be seen, how- 
ever, that all this is possible without the first touch of 
true spirituality. 

87. The activities of the personal ego may be pushed 
into the psychic realm through the cultivation of the 
sixth sense, and actual communication had with the 
souls of men in the body or out of the body, indepen- 
dent of the physical senses, as experience has abundantly 
proven. Nevertheless, all that is done from the stand- 
point and motives of the personal ego, is of the natural, 
not of the spiritual man, and is more or less subject to 
the bias of self-interest. 

88. The question of motive is a moral, not an intel- 
lectual one. The whole matter lies between the stand- 
point and motives of the personal ego and those of the 
impersonal ego, between the standard of personal desire 
and ambition and that of the Divine will and purpose. 
Shall man go forth to develop his powers and seek to 
work out the problem of life and destiny in his own wis- 
dom and strength, independent of a Divine plan and 
purpose in his existence ? or shall he seek the guidance 
and fellowship of the Father in the fulfilment of that 
plan and purpose ? 

89. Ultimate victory or defeat depend upon his final 
answer to these vital questions. 

90. If the attempt is made to open the sixth sense and 



LESSON-HELPS. 27 

develop and exercise the psychometric power from the 
standpoint of the personal ego, the bias of personal de- 
sire, pre-impressions, hereditary and educational preju- 
dice, etc., are certain to be projected into the result, and 
prevent the clear vision of truth. This is practically un- 
avoidable to a greater or less degree. 

91. The sense-consciousuess of the personal ego being- 
developed and educated under the limitations of strictly 
sense-relations, the recognition of personal limitation 
thus established is carried over to the psychic plane. 
This cripples the effort and prevents the full develop- 
ment and unbiased exercise of the psychometric power. 
Emancipation from this sense of organic limitation and 
the bias of selfism, which clings to the personal ego, is 
effected only through the opening of the spiritual con- 
sciousness and the coming forth of the impersonal ego 
of the spiritual man. 

92. So long as motive and incentive to action are 
rooted in selfism, all efforts at psychic culture and occult 
mastery will be attended, more or less, by self-hypno- 
tization and self-deception ; and no perfectly reliable re- 
sults are possible. 

93. On the plane of the spiritual consciousness, all 
sense-limitations and standards are abolished, and from 
the standpoint of the impersonal ego, the love of truth 
for its own sake, is a quickening inspiration to the psychic 
and mental powers. The light of the spiritual conscious- 
ness and the confidence or conscious power it gives, 
liberates the psychic sense and .exalts the psychometric 
perception to unfettered freedom and spontaneous ac- 
tivity. 



28 LESSON HELPS. 

94. From this standpoint only can the mind go forth 
unbiased in pursuit of truth, whether on the sense plane 
or on the psychic plane, seeking truth and right for their 
own sake, independent of any personal preference or 
consideration whatsoever. 

95. Complete emancipation from the limitations of the 
sensuous life, and mastery of the outward world under 
sense relations, are assured only through the permanent 
enthronement of the spiritual consciousness by the open- 
ing of the seventh sense, and the develoj^ment and activ- 
ity of the psychic powers of the sixth sense under illu- 
mination from divine inspiration, by which they become 
the permanent gifts of the Spirit. 

96. On the sensuous plane man learns from experi- 
ence only, and develops his mental powers as he does 
his muscles, by the discipline of oft-repeated exercise in 
given channels of activity, and sometimes with slow and 
unsatisfactory results. 

97. On the psychic plane, under the light and freedom 
of the spiritual consciousness, the soul learns by intui- 
tion and inspiration, anticipates experience, and per- 
ceives truth at first hand in whatever direction the de- 
sire and attention are turned. The spiritually liberated 
and illuminated psychometric power, penetrates with the 
quickness of thought to the very heart and life of what- 
ever subject, person, or thing it is desirable or legitimate 
to know. 

98. On the spiritual plane, "in the power of the 
Spirit," in self-conscious oneness with the Father, the 
soul needs to learn or acquire nothing. It knows and 
possesses all things legitimate to its state, even as God 



LESSON-HELPS. 29 

knows and holds all things in His omniscient and om- 
nipotent grasp. This is perfect illumination, and gives 
absolute power of mastery and possession. This is the 
function of spiritual being and divine realization, in 
which the physical as well as the psychic organism of 
the embodied spirit shares. Divine realization or per- 
fect self-conscious union of the soul with God, is the 
realization of God-being, with corresponding power of 
God-doing. It is the complete realization of being and 
doing in God, and the Being and doing of God in us. 
The Father abiding in us — our consciousness — doeth his 
work. It is the omniscient and omnipotent Father re- 
vealing and giving Himself in His treasures of wisdom 
and knowledge, love and power, to the heart and mind 
of His child. " Son thou art ever with me, and all that 
is mine is thine." 



THE ESOTERIC APPLICATION. 

99. Having considered the fundamental basis and the 
essential definitions and discriminations involved in the 
points necessary to be grasped and held by the under- 
standing, let us proceed to their practical application in 
the steps of induction, by which the soul must advance 
from the exoteric or intellectual apprehension, to the eso- 
teric or spiritual realization in practical experience. 

100. Fiest : the one essential thing to be kept upper- 
most in the thought is the supreme fact that life and the 
sustaining power of life are the immediate manifestation 
of God, immanent and transcendent, the all-animating 



30 LESSON-HELPS. 

and all-embracing Spirit of the Universe. " In him we 
live and move and have our being." 

101. Second : that the very substance of Deific Being 
— which is invisible and omnipotent Spirit — is the inner 
essential substance and groundwork of our being, as it is 
the primal substance and basis of all existences. Hence, 
as the outward universe is projected, formed, nourished, 
and upheld by the direct action of His omnipresent Spirit, 
each atom, molecule, being, and world receives its share 
of that sustaining Presence and Power. 

102. The human soul, therefore, as the child of God, 
with its capacity for thought, affection, and limitless 
growth, and its organism for external activity and ex- 
pression, cannot escape the omnipotent grasp of the 
Father's life, nor fall out of the embrace of his omniscient 
and infinite providence, love, and care. " Know ye not 
that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God 
dwelleth in you ? " 

103. The recognition and realization of this stupendous 
truth is the first necessary step toward the opening up 
and practical realization of the interior life, in the poAver 
and permanent supremacy of the spiritual consciousness. 

101. Third : that God, as immanent and transcendent 
Spirit and absolute Being, is the immediate Father of 
men. Man is therefore in his essential nature and being 
spiritual and divine, though individualized and differenti- 
ated from the infinite Father in personal identity and con- 
sciousness, by and through embodiment. Hence he, too, 
as a spiritual being and a child of God is not only im- 
manent in, but transcendent over his physical organism 
and all his relations to environment through embodiment. 



LESSON-HELPS. 31 

105. The recognition and realizing sense of this sub- 
lime truth leads the soul to seek and find in and through 
the transcendency of its own spiritual nature, direct com- 
munion and fellowship with the Father, which is the 
second step in bringing to actual experience the per- 
manent consciousness of this divine supremacy. 

106. Fourth : whatever be the ultimate nature and 
origin of that which we call matter, there is not a move- 
ment or condition in the material world, minute or great, 
simple or complex, that does not originate in the direct 
action of omnipresent and omnipotent Spirit. 

107. Spirit is the original fountain and groundwork of 
motion, life, sensation, intelligence, moral quality, love, 
and spirituality. Hence, when spirituality, whose law is 
love, has full organic expression in physical embodiment, 
all the preceding attributes and qualities become at once 
subordinated to this supreme law, and we have " the 
manifestation of the sons of God " in the flesh, in whom 
" dwelleth all the fulness of the God-head (God-nature) 
bodily." 

108. Motion, life, sensation, and instinct were embodied 
and brought to organic expression in the kingdoms pre- 
ceding man ; motion and chemical activity in the mineral 
world, life and vital activity in the vegetable, and these 
with sensation and instinct added in the animal. 

109. The further evolution and embodiment of the still 
higher attributes of self-conscious intelligence and moral 
sense, conjoined with, but overruling all the qualities of 
previous embodiment, brought forth man, differentiated 
from and lifted above the animal kingdom, making of him 
a distinct type and higher order of being. 



32 LESSON- HELPS. 

110. The specific attributes of reason, conscience, and 
aspiration, which distinguish man and differentiate him 
from all other forms of embodied life, are, as we have seen, 
the germs of divine qualities, with a capacity for endless 
development, in and through which the Deific nature — 
love and spirituality — become fully incarnate and mani- 
fest in the royal sons and daughters of the infinite Father- 
Mother. 

111. All that is needed then to bring man to this per- 
fection is the evolution and enthronement of love and 
spirituality as the controlling and directing power of 
the personal and social life. This, as already intimated, 
is to be effected by his co-operation with the Father's 
Spirit and power in his life, through unity of will and 
purpose with Him. 

112. Co-operation with the Spirit and purpose of the 
Father, through unity of will in the direction of desire 
and faith, is the third and final step in attaining the atti- 
tude of mind and heart which constitutes the way of 
divine realization. 

113. Fifth : though a spiritual being and direct off- 
spring of God, individualized through embodiment, man 
first awakens to the consciousness of personal identity as 
an individual holding definite relations to other beings 
and things, on the external plane, under the limitations 
of sense-relations and material conditions. But this, as 
we have seen, is only the primary condition necessary to 
his individualization as a personal identity. When this 
is fully accomplished and his self-consciousness and 
moral sense of personal responsibility is firmly estab- 
lished under these relations, he is ready to be awakened 



LESSON- HELPS. 33 

to the consciousness of his spiritual nature and divine 
relationship, which is the second or spiritual birth. This 
follows as the immediate result of the attitude taken in 
the first three steps above mentioned. 

" HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE ? " 

114. When this birth into a new and higher order and 
plane of life is first suggested to man in the sensuous 
understanding and experience he will say, with Mco- 
demus of old, "How can these things be?" Neverthe- 
less he must be assured of the fact that he is in reality 
now the offspring of God, who is Spirit, that he is there- 
fore an embodied spiritual being with an inherent ca- 
pacity for inward communion with the Father, through 
which he will be brought to realize the quickening and 
transforming touch of the Father's Spirit, and lifted 
thereby into the freedom and supremacy of the spiritual 
life. 

115. He must be taught that this second birth is but 
the awakening to the consciousness of his own spiritual 
nature, which brings the realization of the inherent divin- 
ity and transcendency of his being as the child of God, 
through loyalty to which he is enabled henceforth to 
dwell and walk in conscious unity and fellowship with 
the Father in all things. 

116. This was the message of the Christ, which he en- 
joined upon his followers to proclaim to all the world, 
with the accompanying assurance, that whosoever ac- 
cepted and entered into its mighty promise should be 
saved or brought to its divine realization in experience. 



34 LEbbON-HELlb. 



THE ONE SOURCE OF LIFE AND POWER. 

117. The power of life and physical activity which is 
actualized by man on the external plane of sense-relations 
and the sense-consciousness are derived immediately 
froin the indwelling spirit of God, which, as we have 
seen, is the primal and indestructible substance and 
groundwork of his being. 

118. On the higher plane of the psychic relations and 
soul-consciousness, he realizes in like manner, from the 
same source, the power of thought and affection or of 
mental and emotional activity. 

119. But when awakened to the inmost and transcend- 
ent plane of the spiritual consciousness, through which 
in his essential nature he is united to and one with the 
Father, he realizes the transcendent power of being and 
mastery. 

120. Dwelling on the plane of the sense-conscious- 
ness, man is held to the limitation of sense-relations ; be- 
cause the standard of his faith and effort is born wholly 
of sense-experience. The power which seems born of 
the spiritual consciousness is latent in him as a spiritual 
being from the first ; the conscious touch of the Di- 
vine and Absolute awakens him to the realization of it. 

121. No new power is bom in him from this experi- 
ence. He is only awakened to the consciousness of that 
which was his from the first. It is not a question of de- 
velopment or attainment, but of realization. It is the 
heir entering into his inheritance as a birthright which he 
has done nothing to acquire, but which was provided and 



LESSON-HELPS. 35 

bestowed as a free gift by the Father. Development or 
attainment is the law of the sense-life, not so of the spir- 
itual ; spiritual things must not be judged from the stand- 
ards of sense. 

122. This inward plane of man's being and relation- 
ship is as much a present fact, as is the external and 
sense-plane, and has been from the beginning of his in- 
dividual career. The power of mastery of which he be- 
comes conscious on the higher plane, was in him, though 
latent while yet under the sense of limitation from the 
recognition of sense-relations only. 

123. The limitation he recognizes on both the physical 
and psychic planes is but a sense of limitation, which is 
only the limitation of his consciousness, born of experi- 
ence under sense-relations ; not a limitation of the power 
itself. The nature and the power are there and have 
constituted his deeper and true being from the first, 
only he has not yet awakened to the consciousness of 
the fact and actualized it in practical experience. 

124. But having from the sense-plane attained the 
true attitude and thus entered upon the way, he has 
but to hold firmly to the attitude and understanding thus 
reached, and in the further recognition of the supreme 
truth of his being we are now considering, enter at once 
into its realization. 

125. This higher realization is the exercise of our di- 
vine prerogative, in appropriating by faith or confidently 
taking up and exercising the power of spiritual suprem- 
acy which belongs to us as spiritual beings and chil- 
dren of God, and which is practically ours only by its 
appropriation and use. 



36 LESSON-HELPS. 

126. This must be clone, however, in the sense of unity 
with, dependence upon, and faith in the sustaining power 
of God. If attempted in the strength of our own will, 
we shall fail, for in this attitude we cannot escape the 
memory of sense-experience and the sense of limitation 
which that entails. 

127. We must lay hold of the spiritual consciousness 
and the realization of power which it confers, in order to 
let go of the sense-consciousness and drop the recogni- 
tion of limitation which that evokes. To effectually do 
this, we must turn from self and open our souls to God, 
in the confident recognition that He is our Father, and 
that we through unity of will and purpose with Him, as 
His children, have in Him the freedom and supremacy of 
our being. " Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on 
eternal life." " For God hath not given us the spirit of 
fear, but of power, and of love, arM of a sound mind." 

128. To the full extent that we by faith lay hold in 
thought and desire on God and His eternal transcen- 
dency of life, His life and power take hold of us and we 
become consciously one with Him in them, and there is 

\~no longer place for the narrowness of self, or the limita- 
tions of sense. 

129. Man can never know or practically realize his 
own true nature and capacity as an embodied spiritual 
being and child of God, until he becomes self-conscious 
on the three planes of his being and relations to the Ma- 
crocosm, in their co-ordinated activities, the spiritual or 
God-plane holding its normal and legitimate supremacy. 
Hence the Master says " Ye must be born again." 
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that 



LESSON-HELPS. 37 

which is born of the Spirit is spirit." " Verily, verily, I 
say irnto thee, except a man be born of water and of the 
Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God " — the 
kingdom of divine supremacy. 

130. God is the supreme reality of the universe, and 
man's relation to God as His offspring is the supreme 
reality of his being, and this vital relation of God to 
men as Father to children, and of men to God as children 
to Parent, is as indestructible and absolute as are the 
nature of God and the human soul. And man must 
stand, or dwell and act in the full consciousness of this 
relation in practical experience, before he can know and 
exercise his normal and legitimate freedom and suprem- 
acy in and over his relations to that which is external to 
himself. 

131. It is because he is practically conscious only of 
his sense and psychic relations that man feels his limita- 
tions under these relations. These relations in and of 
themselves awaken this sense of limited freedom and 
power. 

132. But as God is within, behind, and above all these 
relations in the absolute freedom and supremacy of His 
Being, so man, as the child of God, when he awakes to 
the consciousness of this relation, comes into the practi- 
cal realization of his own freedom and supremacy as a 
spiritual being. 

133. Dwelling exclusively in the sensuous life gives the 
sense of limitation which holds man in subjection to ex- 
ternal conditions, forgetful of his innate power of mas- 
tery ; while dwelling on the plane of the spiritual life 
and consciousness gives the sense of spiritual being and 



38 LESSON-HELPS. 

supremacy which brings its realization in practical ex- 
perience. 

134. It is through the absorption of attention that 
man dwells upon either of these planes ; and the direc- 
tion of attention is a matter of choice and volition. 

135. If, then, as a living soul man centers his thought 
and desire upon the things of the sense-world, and seeks 
his wealth of knowledge and possession in that which 
ministers to his sense-life only, he necessarily becomes 
sensuous and materialistic in his thought and affection, 
and so dependent upon external relations and conditions. 
He thus comes into bondage to the very things he pos- 
sesses or seeks to possess ; and it is thus that mankind 
so easily become the slaves of sense, in bondage to " the 
lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
life," which "are not of the Father." 

136. If, again, man seeks knowledge and power through 
occult science and the cultivation and exercise of the 
psychic power of the sixth sense, from the standpoint of 
the personal ego, he carries the sense of limitation de- 
rived from experience under sense-relations, over into his 
psychical efforts by which they are crippled : and, blind- 
ed also by the bias of self-interest, he becomes more or 
less the subject of self-hypnotization and delusion. 

137. But if he seek his knowledge and mastery through 
illumination from and conscious unity with God, he 
comes into the consciousness of his own spiritual being 
and supremacy, and is thus emancipated from the limi- 
tations of the sense-consciousness and the bias of self- 
interest. 

138. Through the revelation or light of the Spirit of 



LESSON-HELPS. 39 

God, in which the soul of things as well as the external 
of things are defined and held in their true position and 
relations, he sees and possesses their secrets even as God 
sees and possesses them. " For the Spirit searcheth [re- 
vealeth] all things, yea the deep things of God," and, 
" there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; 
neither hid that shall not be known." 

139. If, then, man center his thought and affection upon 
God and the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, 
the treasures of wisdom and goodness, knowledge and vir- 
tue, he becomes God-like in thinking and feeling, and 
thus impersonal and impartial, wise and good. 

140. Through unity with God he enters into unity of 
spirit with all things, and both the soul of things and the 
body of things are seen in their true light, and appreci- 
ated for what they are, without exaggeration, deflection, 
or perversion. He sees and knows them as they exist in 
the mind and purpose of God, and thus has the absolute 
truth concerning them. 

141. In this perception of and unity with the truth 
and spirit of all things with which man is specifically re- 
lated, or to which his attention is called, they become to 
his consciousness essentially one with his own life, and 
so the legitimate objects of his love and care. He holds 
them in his mind and heart even as they are held by the 
Father. 

142. Here, then, we have the infallible key to divine 
illumination and occult mastery, as presented by the 
Master : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness and all these things shall be added unto 
you." 



40 LESSON-HELPS. 

143. Still, the question will be asked how to so seek 
that we may at once enter into this spiritual emancipation 
and realize here and now our freedom and mastery. To 
this there is but one answer, for there is but one way, 
and that way direct, quick, and infallible as illustrated in 
the Christ and Apostolic experience : " Ye shall seek me 
and find me when ye search for me with all your heart." 

144. To break the power of self and sense, the 
thought, attention, and desire must for the time be 
centered exclusively upon God and the things of the 
Spirit of God, as the supreme objects of desire and 
realization. These must be made the constant subject 
of the most earnest prayer, devout meditation, and ab- 
sorbing contemplation. 

145. AYhen the attention is wholly centered upon any 
one object, it is to the same degree withdrawn from all 
others ; so when the attentiou is thus fixed in confident 
desire upon God, as the All-Father to be realized and 
loved, the soul is thereby opened to the conscious touch 
of His Spirit, and this brings the divine assurance of 
sonship and oneness, the witness of His Spirit with our 
spirit, and the full deliverance, complete spiritual eman- 
cipation. 

146. "When this is once effected, the soul can go forth 
in its sense of unity with the Father to its activities on 
both the sense plane and the ps}~chic plane, clad in 
the invincible panoply of the conscious power of mas- 
tery and achievement, and not again fall into bondage on 
the one plane, or delusion on the other. 

147. There is but one source of possible danger of fall- 
ing from this high estate and losing this power of mastery 



LESSON-HELPS. 41 

over the external, and that is an over-self-confidence 
from an npspringing selfism and spiritual pride, which 
lets go of the sense of dependence upon the Father, and 
so loses the grace of humility, the only safeguard against 
egotism and spiritual pride, that pride which ever goeth 
before a fall. 

148. Nevertheless, if from any cause, the divine light 
of the soul becomes at all obscured, and faith lets go her 
hold upon divine assurance, and the sense of weakness 
and limitation, anxiety and fear creep in, the soul hav- 
ing once found the way of deliverance and proved the 
Father's eternal and changeless grace, forgiveness, and 
healing, may again find prompt restoration by that way. 

149. Any needy soul has but to touch the hem of the 
Divine garment of grace, in the spirit and attitude of a 
child, the spirit and attitude of love, trust, and loyalty, 
to receive the regenerating and purifying fire, the trans- 
forming and restoring power of the Father's changeless 
and quenchless love. His love is the transforming chem- 
istry of the spiritual life, which transmutes by an im- 
mediate process, the basest elements and conditions of 
perverted humanity that may be brought under its 
direct influence, and remolds them after the pattern of 
the Divine ideal. 

150. If we persistently fix our mind upon God in 
the contemplation of the spiritual perfection and tran- 
scendency of His Being, enthroned in and over His world 
in a gracious all-embracing love and providence, we im- 
mediately begin to feel the harmony of universal being, 
and the unshaken conviction that all things are indeed 
held in the secure grasp of His beneficent law, and over- 



42 LESSON-HELPS. 

ruled and directed by His infinite wisdom and goodness. 
This sense of divine security gives birth to the feeling of 
confidence and trust, and the heart opens in glad and 
eager desire to be one with the Father in His wisdom and 
goodness, and in the harmony of His world. 

151. This contemplation of God in His relation to the 
world, and to ourselves as His children, the special ob- 
ject of His love and providence — for whom indeed the 
worlds and all therein were made — and of our privilege 
of unity and fellowship with Him in these relations, can- 
not be entered into daily and persistently without enkin- 
dling and intensifying desire for this high fellowship) and 
unity, until it becomes the all-absorbing passion of the 
heart and the all-engrossing thought of the mind. 

152. When this stage is reached, the unity is effected : 
for the love of- God as the compassionate Father-Mother, 
is realized in the very absorption of the child's heart in 
God. The soul's cry, " O my Father," is God's answer, 
" Here, my child." One is involved in the other, since it 
is the Father's nature in His child calling for its own. 

153. This once actualized in experience, however long 
the time consumed in reaching it, the habit and the 
power are soon acquired of passing, in a moment, by an 
easy transition from the outer to the inner planes of 
communion, at will. 

151. In thus withdrawing from outward things and re- 
tiring within, shutting out self and sense, and opening 
the heart in desire and faith for the conscious touch of 
the Father's Spirit and the revelation of His will, we ne- 
cessarily place ourselves under the operation of His Spirit 
in and upon our own, and thus become a mirror for the 



LESSON-HELPS. 43 

reflection or awakening of His image in us, and such 
revelation of His will as is needful to us. 

155. In the passionate desire for and absorbing con- 
templation of an ideal perfection, especially if that ideal 
be to our mind a living reality, we necessarily become 
transformed into its likeness. This is a law of soul life. 
We do not transform it into our likeness, but are trans- 
formed by it. 

156. So we cannot contemplate God in His divine su- 
premacy and perfection as a living reality, and as our 
heavenly Father, without being lifted into unity with 
Him in the realization of our own divinity and spiritual 
supremacy, as His children. 

157. Absorption in things of sense brings us into bond- 
age, and under the law and limitation of the sense life. 
So absorption in God and the things of the Spirit of 
God, lifts us into the freedom and supremacy of the 
spiritual life, " The liberty of the glory of the children of 
God." 

158. It was this divine law and certain method, to which 
the great Apostle referred in his second letter to the 
Corinthians. " We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a 
mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the 
same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord 
the Spirit." But we must unveil our faces unto God, by 
turning them from the things of sense and self, to Him, 
in desire and faith. (See in this connection paragraphs 
37 to 51 inclusive.) 

159. Men need to realize their dependence upon God 
for inspiration and power, spiritually, as they do their 
dependence upon nature for the sustenance which renews 



/ 



44 LESSON-HELPS. 

the body, physically, and to give at least as much time 
and attention to corresponding seasons of spiritual re- 
freshment as they do to the supply of the physical de- 
mands. When they seek and appropriate the wine and 
bread of heaven with the same confidence and eagerness 
that they do their earthly food, they will find an inex- 
haustible supply and the same freedom of access. 

160. Of the external supply man may be robbed by his 
fellows, and his access to its source blocked in many 
ways ; but no monopoly can in anyway be put upon his 
spiritual supply, and no man, no power of earth or hell 
can obstruct in the slightest degree his access to God. 
He has but to retire within, to the inner chamber of his 
own soul, to find the door which opens by his desire and 
faith, into the fulness of the Father's love and bounty. 

161. Nothing, absolutely nothing can shut any man 
from this free, unlimited access to God, but his own fear 
and doubt. Let each soul, then, who would know this glad 
truth in personal experience, set apart a portion of each 
day for retirement from sensuous contact with the world, 
and enter into this free, unfettered communion with the 
Father. 

162. In doing this, he should follow the specific in- 
struction of the Master : " And when thou pray est, thou 
shalt not be as the hypocrites are : for they love to pray 
standing in the synagogue and in the corners of the street, 
that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, 
They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, 
enter into thy closet [not only an inner room, or place 
of external seclusion, but the inner sanctuary of the soul], 
and when thou hast shut thy door [the door of sense], 



LESSON-HELPS. 45 

pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father 
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when 
ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do : for 
they think that they shall be heard for their much speak- 
ing. Be not ye therefore like unto them : for your 
heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of 
before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye : 
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is 
in heaven." 

163. If these opening words of the model prayer be 
meditated upon till their significance is realized, the 
full secret of effectual prayer will be opened to the soul. 
That secret lies in the true attitude of the soul toward 
God. It is not only the recognition, but the realiza- 
tion of God as the compassionate Father of men, and 
their immediate source of dependence for all that they 
have, or may have. This fully realized awakens that 
precious sense of holy relation which the gracious words 
of the Master so fitly express, "Hallowed be thy 
name." 

164. When this realizing sense of the Divine Paternity 
and providence is once established and active in the soul, 
the spontaneous expression of the heart's desire will ever 
and necessarily be, " Thy kingdom come and thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven." 

165. The entire prayer defines and expresses the per- 
fect attitude toward God as child to parent, which the 
Master everywhere emphasizes as necessary to entrance 
into the kingdom of God or the realization of the per- 
fect and victorious life — the attitude of humble depend- 



46 LESftOTT-HELPS. 

ence upon, trusting confidence in, and loving obedience 
to the infinite Father-Mother. 

166. The fully awakened sense of dependence upon 
the All-Father and His perfect providence, establishes 
the confident assurance, which is "the rest of faith," that 
all our needs are not only known but provided for by 
Him, and that we may appropriate from His spiritual 
bounty as freely as we do from His physical provi- 
dence. 

167. In those words, " Use not vain repetitions as 
the heathen do : for they think that they shall be heard 
for their much speaking," etc., the Master evidently 
referred to the " yoga " practice of the Easterns, which 
consists (in part) of endless repetitions of certain specifi- 
cally formulated phrases to which are attached a secret 
mystic significance revealed only to initiates. 

168. The repeated utterance of these while holding 
the thought of their significance, constitutes a form of 
invocation which is supposed to awaken corresponding 
mental, or, as they are sometimes regarded, spiritual vi- 
brations (vibrations upon the spiritual atmosphere) which 
react upon the subject to lift him gradually into the real- 
ization of the ideal of his desire. 

169. This, it will be perceived, is, after all, but a form 
of will- worship in which the personal ego is really trying 
to answer his own prayers. It is a form of self-hyp- 
notization which never brings the true, permanent real- 
ization. It is not based upon the recognition of a 
heavenly Father and a realizing sense of dependence 
upon Him who holds in His gracious providence a full 
and perfect supply for our every necessity, and to 



LESSON-HELPS. 47 

whom we have but to open ourselves in this sense of 
dependence and trusting confidence, as child to parent, 
to have that need immediately and bountifully met. 
"Be ye not therefore [in your prayer] like unto them : 
for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of be- 
fore ye ask Him." 

170. If we are not anxious about this or that 
thing or supposed necessity, but seek only the ful- 
filment of the Father's will and providence toward us, 
" who knoweth what things we have need of," that which 
is best for us will be realized in its divine fulness. 
" Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness for they shall be filled." "Be not therefore 
anxious, saying, What shall we eat ? or, What shall 
we drink ? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? 

for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye 
have need of all these things. But seek ye first His 
kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things shall 
be added unto you." 

171. Says Jacob Boehme, "the God-taught Philoso- 
pher," and wonderfully illuminated seer of spiritual 
things : "If the soul is to receive actual advantage and 
fruition from prayer, then must her will turn away from 
all creatures and terrestrial things and stand pure before 
God. Let not the flesh with its desires co-operate so 
that earthly desires may not be introduced into the divine 
effect in the soul. 

Every prayer which does not find and take, is cold and 
insipid and is obstructed by temporal and terrestrial 
things ; that is to say, the soul does not approach God in 
purity. She does not want to sacrifice herself entirely 



48 LESSON-HELPS. 

to God, but clings to terrestrial loves which hold her 
imprisoned so that she cannot attain the kingdom of 
God. . . . 

Prayer is the union with God effected by the sacrifice 
of the personal will. It is, therefore, the only ' yoga 
practice ' worthy of serious attention. . . . 

He who truly prays co-operates with God internally, 
while externally he produces good fruit. 

Mere word-prayer without exaltation of thought and 
divine desire (desire after divine things) is only an ex- 
ternal thing, a mere repeating of words " (" Life and 
Writings of Boehme," by Franz Hartman). 

172. It will thus be seen that true prayer and com- 
munion with God is effected and realized only by laying 
down or stilling all activities of the personal ego, or ex- 
pressions of self-will, that the will of the Father may be 
revealed and executed in us. 

173. This is the only possible coming to the Father, 
and this cannot be done without the immediate and full 
fruition of this divine realization in the unmistakable 
manifestation of the Father in us. His Spirit witness- 
ing with our spirit that we are children of God. The 
conscious touch, and communion with His Spirit lifts us 
into the self-conscious realization of our own spiritual 
nature in its divine and rightful supremacy. 

174. If, however, we seek union and communion with 
the Father for our own sake, we are still under the mo- 
tives and inspiration of self-love, and deceive ourselves in 
the act. If we seek the Father for His sake, then in the 
very act and attitude of forgetting self for him is His 
love and emancipating power manifest in us. And we, 



LESSON-HELPS. 49 

entering into His boundless and impartial love find our- 
selves loving all beings and tilings, including ourselves in 
Him, and as His. 

175. But how can we thus forget ourselves in our 
search for God ? Nothing can lead to this but the per- 
sistent and continually repeated effort in seeking to with- 
draw our attention and thoughts from ourselves and the 
things that pertain to self, by fixing them upon God in 
earnest and devout contemplation ; to contemplate Him 
in the divine perfections of His being and supremacy, and 
especially in His beneficent character and relations to us 
as the Father of our spirits, and the provider of our every 
need or comfort. 

176. Absorption in this contemplation will so touch 
the heart and sympathy with the loving qualities of His 
Being, that though at the first revelation we sink into the 
depths of humiliation at the recognition of the meanness, 
ingratitude, and absurd pride of our little self, we shall 
nevertheless be thus lifted out of all this by taking on 
the qualities we recognize and adore in the Father, and, 
awaking in His likeness, be satisfied. 

177. In acquiring the art and habit of inward retire- 
ment for divine communion, some portion of each day 
should be sacredly dedicated to this object, and as per- 
fect seclusion as possible should be secured from the 
noise and stir of those outward activities and associations 
in which the most of the world are entangled. 

178. When this art of inward retirement is once fully 
mastered, however, no noise or stir of outward circum- 
stance can prevent the soul from this high privilege and 
ineffable experience at any and all times. 



50 LESSON-HELPS. 

179. But while acquiring this divine art, the greatest, 
yet in its true sense the simplest, retirement and se- 
clusion as far as possible from the diverting demands of 
sense relations, seems to be a necessity to the still more 
inward retirement of the soul, and the holding of the 
attention and desires upon the divine and transcendent 
realities of the inner world. ' 

180. Says Thomas Yaughan, a mystic of the middle 
centuries, in his " Magical Writings," " Now for thy study 
(meditation upon divine things), in the winter thy cham- 
ber is thy best residence. ... In the summer, translate 
thyself to the fields, where all are green with the breath 
of God, and fresh with the powers of Heaven. Learn to 
refer all naturals to their spirituals by help of the secret 
analogy ; for this is the w r ay the magicians went and 
found out miracles. Many there are w r ho bestow not 
their thoughts on God till the world fails them. . . . Do 
thou think on Him first, and He will speak to thy thoughts 
at last. Sometimes thou mayest w r alk in groves, which 
being full of majesty, will much advance the soul; some- 
times by clear active rivers, for by such (say the mystic 
poets) Apollo contemplated. This is the way I would 
have thee walk in, if thou dost intend to be a solid Chris- 
tian philosopher. Thou must, as Agrippa saith, ' live 
only to God and the angels ; reject all things which are 
in opposition to heaven ; otherwise thou canst have no 
communion with superiors.' Lastly, be single, not soli- 
tary. Avoid the multitude, as well of passions as per- 
sons. ... To conclude, I would have thee know that 
every day is a year contracted, that every year is an ex- 
tended day. Anticipate the year in the day, and lose not 



LESSON-HELPS. 51 

a day in the year. Make use of indeterminate agents till 
thou canst find a determinate one. . . . Learn from thy 
errors to be infallible, from thy misfortunes to be con- 
stant. There is nothing stronger than perseverance, for 
it ends in miracles. I could tell thee more, but that 
were to puzzle thee. Learn this first, and thou mayst 
teach me the last." 

181. There is no place like a mountain retreat or a 
depth of forest shade and stillness for a season of retire- 
ment, meditation, contemplation, and prayer. The great 
mystics and illuminati of the world have resorted thither, 
not only in the earlier stages of the divine initiation, but 
for seasons of spiritual refreshment in occasional brief 
retirement from the active ministry of service in contact 
with the world. 

182. There is, in these majestic solitudes, an impressive 
stillness which serves to shut out the world of bustle, 
mart, and trade, hush to repose the feverish activities of 
the sense-life awakened by contact with that world, and 
woo the soul to meditation and communion with the 
invisible and interior things of the Spirit. 

183. It is a great advantage, therefore, for the neophyte, 
in seeking to break the power of the sense-consciousness 
by the opening and enthronement of the spiritual, to 
improve every opportunity in using these retreats for > 
their outward help to his inward retirement. 

184. There is so much of God and His eternal calm 
expressed in. the serene majesty and silence of the 
mountain and forest solitudes, that the soul once rising 
to full inward communion with the Father, finds it easy 
to recognize, and walk with Him in the stillness of the 



52 LESSON-HELPS. 

life which is active and manifest in tree and grass and 
flower. 

185. In these experiences the soul readily learns its 
first lessons of holding conscious union with God in the 
things and relations of the external world, as a prepara- 
tion for holding that consciousness in the more trying 
positions and relations of actual contact with men, and 
participation in the activities and obligations of society 
and business life. 

186. In the summer time, as the mystic Yaughan says, 
we may greatly strengthen and advance our hold upon 
the interior life, and gain renewed power for service in the 
external, by frequent resort to mountain and forest retreats, 
as did the Master, and in the winters we may use for this 
purpose the seclusion and privacy of our own chamber. 

187. But while thus considering the nature and steps 
of contemplation which lead up to permanent spiritual 
illumination, freedom, and supremacy, it is also necessary 
to impress the student with the fact that with the actual 
opening of the spiritual life and consciousness, and 
during the process of the co-ordination of the sense-con- 
sciousness, and sense-experience with the spiritual in its 
rightful supremacy, there comes a season of peculiar and 
powerful temptation. 

188. It was thus with the Master, and has been so with 
all divinely illumined souls whose inner experiences have 
been recorded, and all with one accord forewarn and 
seek to guard the initiate against this subtle and unsus- 
pected danger. 

189. Temptation comes in the thousand ways in which 
the personal ego, rooted in selfism, seeks to maintain its 



LESSON-HELPS. 53 

hold, and while seeming to yield, seeks to appropriate 
the new-born power and freedom to the ends of personal 
pride, ambition, or desire. 

190. Jacob Boehme has especially emphasized this 
danger under which so many have fallen by the way. He 
says, " The enlightened children of God are threatened 
by a great danger ; namely, in many of them who enjoyed 
the great sight of the holiness of God, wherein the tri- 
umph of life is obtained, carnal reason mirrors itself 
therein and seeks to intrude its selfishness into the centre 
from which the light shines. From this result misera- 
ble pride and self-conceit ; and selfish reason — being, 
moreover, nothing but a reflection of the eternal light — 
fancies itself to be more than that. It thinks that it may 
do now as it pleases, and that, whatever it does, it is the 
will of God doing it in it, and it believes itself to be a 
prophet. Nevertheless it enters nowhere except within 
its own self, and moves within its own desire, whereby 
the centrium natura (personal ego) soon begins to arise. 
Then the devil of flattery comes forward, and man be- 
comes drunk with self-conceit, persuading himself that 
it is God who compels him to act as he does. Thus he 
ruins the good beginning, during which the light of God 
began to shine within nature, and then the light of God 
departs from him. There is then nothing left but the 
light of external nature within, but self-assertion puts 
itself therein and fancies that it is the original light 
received from God." "Watch and pray," said the 
Master, that ye enter not into temptation : the spirit 
indeed is willing but the flesh is Aveak." "And what I 
say unto you I say unto all. Watch." 



54 LESSON-HELPS. 

191. This seclusion from the whirl and activities of 
social and business or professional life, for contact with 
the unperverted life and undisturbed atmosphere of 
nature in the calm, quiet stillness of her solitudes, is a 
great help to those who can have it. We have never- 
theless a still more important and effective help in as- 
sociation with those who are one with us in seeking the 
full realization of the spiritual life in its divine and per- 
manent supremacy. 

192. Union of souls in one ideal and purpose, and in 
associative action, creates a mental atmosphere, by the 
blending of their several emanative mental spheres, 
which reacts upon each Avith the full power of their 
blended thought, aspiration, and spiritual energy, and 
thus serves a twofold purpose : first, to quicken, inten- 
sify, and greatly reinforce the individual effort, and, 
second, to furnish a wall of protection, so to speak, 
around each member of the group, against the discord- 
ant and disturbing influences that may prevail in the 
world-seeking community in which they may be living. 

193. Until the Brotherhood of the spiritual life is uni- 
versally realized, local groups of those who have entered 
into a greater or less degree of realization, should be 
formed and faithfully attended, after the successful and 
victorious example of the Apostles just prior to the Pen- 
tecostal baptism, and in obedience to the last injunction 
and promise of the Master : " And, behold, I send the 
promise of my Father upon you : but tarry ye [continue] 
in the City of Jerusalem [City of peace, unity, concord] 
until ye be endued with power from on high." " And, 
being assembled together with them, commanded them 



LESSON-HELPS. 55 

that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for 
the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard 
of me ; for John truly baptized with water ; but ye shall 
be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence." 
" And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the 
times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his 
own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the 
Holy Spirit is come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses 
unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in 
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 

194. These spiritual brotherhoods in their frequent 
gatherings constitute our city of Jerusalem, in which to 
continue and wait expectantly for the promise of the 
Father, until haying reached the Apostolic condition, of 
being of one accord in one place, we too shall receive a 
like wonderful baptism and illumination of the Spirit, 
after which like them, we may go forth witnessing to the 
living Christ in the Apostolic power of ministry to the 
world. 

195. This great injunction and promise of the Master 
should not be lost sight of, and we should continually 
seek for and expect nothing less, nor stop short of its 
full and perfect realization. 

196. We have certainly an encouraging example in the 
first Disciples, who were no better qualified than our- 
selves (and probably not as well), either in capacity or 
education for this blessing, save in the one fact of their 
having been personal witnesses of the marvelous life and. 
teaching of the Master as the basis of their faith. 

197. But we have the essential teaching of the Master 
and the story of his life, as transmitted to us from them, 



56 LESSON-HELPS. 

so that even this advantage is practically supplied 
if we fully accept the truth of their testimony, and are 
therefore without excuse if we do not act our faith and 
prove its truth and power in personal experience. 

198. Still another aid, and of equal importance, is the 
earnest study of inspired Scripture, frequent prayerful 
meditation upon the words of spiritual wisdom that have 
been preserved to us of the great illuminated teachers of 
the world. Especially should we carefully study and 
meditate upon the life and teaching of the one supremely 
anointed Teacher, until we feel the touch of his mighty 
spirit and the kindling inspiration of his transcendent 
wisdom and goodness. " If ye continue in my words," 
he said, " then shall ye be my disciples indeed, and ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free." 

199. Those who, from circumstances beyond their 
control, are deprived of the privileges of the association 
referred to, and perhaps of the summer retreat of 
forest and mountain, can at least enjoy this intimate 
association with the master minds and illuminati of the 
world whose words of inspired wisdom have providen- 
tially been preserved to us, and placed within reach of 
all people in civilized lands. 

200. This wonderful aid to esoteric education and 
spiritual enlightenment should not be neglected, but 
should be an important factor in the associated work 
of the groups, and in the seasons of retirement and in- 
ward communings in nature's solitudes. The spirit of 
devout meditation, contemplation, and prayer is always 
more or less awakened by the earnest study of inspired 
writings, and this is a privilege within reach of all. 



LESSON-HELPS. 57 

201. Many modern seekers of esoteric wisdom lose 
much, very much, by neglecting the habitual study of the 
New Testament, forgetting that it holds the concentrated 
wisdom of all inspired writing, and the one complete 
illustration of the certain and perfect way for all. No 
other writing, ancient or modern, can compare with this 
or fill its place. 

EEVIEW, SUMMARY, AND CLOSING APPEAL. 

202. In reviewing the ground over which we have 
passed in the preceding pages, what formulates itself to 
the mind as the true object of this esoteric study and 
effort? And what are the specific means and orderly 
steps of its realization as brought to light by the study ? 
Let each student ask and answer these questions for him- 
self, as in the closing paragraphs we seek to gather up 
the essential points involved, and bring them to the focus 
of a condensed and comprehensive statement. 

203. It would seem plain enough that the real and only 
object or ideal of attainment and realization to hold be- 
fore the mind and heart, is first, the opening of the spirit-^ 
ual consciousness, or the realization of conscious union 
and fellowship with God, in the light, freedom, and su- 
premacy of the spiritual life ; and second, the exercise of 
that freedom and supremacy, in unison with the Divine 
will, in and over all our relations to environment, on 
both the sense and psychic planes of activity. We are 
enjoined by the Christ to be perfect as the Father in 
heaven is perfect. 

204. This divine realization should certainly be the 



58 LESSON-HELPS. 

end and aim of all earthly ambition and seeking, because, 
as Ave have seen, it is the ideal, purpose, and provision of 
the All-Father for us as His children. We cannot there- 
fore fully glorify Him in our bodies and spirits, which 
are His, by any less achievement. The first practical 
step, then, is the acceptance by faith of this transcendent 
possibility as the unquestioned purpose and provision of 
the Father, and then the unreserved committal of the 
whole soul to the work of its realization, not in our own 
wisdom and strength, but under the guiding inspiration 
and sustaining power of the Father's indwelling Spirit. 

205. When this position or attitude of mind and heart 
is once fully taken, the next practical thing is to devote 
a portion of each day, however small, to the practice of 
withdrawing the attention, thought, and desire, from out- 
ward activities and the things of the sense-life, by center- 
ing them upon God and the higher life of divine com- 
munion and fellowship, in devout meditation, earnest 
prayer, and absorbing contemplation. 

206. Few will find this an easy accomplishment at first, 
yet determined and persistent effort will bring success, 
and however prolonged, the divine result will prove it 
to have been a glorious investment of time and effort. 

207. This daily exercise and consecrated effort should 
be unflinchingly persevered in until the perfect mas- 
tery of the attention is acquired, and the act of passing at 
will from the sensuous to the spiritual plane of thought 
and realization, becomes, as it surely will, an easy and 
cherished practice. 

208. The spiritual power realized from this daily habit 
of divine communion, will sooner or later enable the soul 



LESSON-HELPS. 59 

to bring the attention, thought, and desire under perfect 
control, and to direct them to the things of the outward 
or inward planes at will. 

209. Special aids to this effort and practice, as already 
suggested, are found in seasons of retirement, seclusion, 
or solitude, as well as associative efforts of spiritual 
gatherings for divine communion and inspiration, and the 
special study of inspired Scriptures and the experiences 
of inspired lives. 

The unbiased study of the higher nature and possi- 
bilities of man, in the light of the Christ life and teach- 
ing, and of the illustrative experiences of the seers and 
prophets of all time, is the best possible means of awaken- 
ing and establishing the practical faith needed to lead the 
soul to give itself in unreserved co-operation with the 
Father in the work of realization. 

210. There have been in all ages two classes of mys- 
tics seeking interior illumination, or communication and 
union with a super-sensuous plane of intelligence and 
power. One class have sought from the standpoint of re- 
ligion, the other from that of science and philosophy. 

211. These again have been subdivided each, practi- 
cally, into two classes. One branch of the religious mys- 
tics have been most concerned in seeking the assurance 
of a continued and happy existence beyond the grave, the 
desire for personal salvation being the leading motive. 
The other, having less fear of the possible terrors of either 
annihilation or falling into realms of darkness and hope- 
less misery beyond, have sought for the enlightening 
wisdom to be derived through an inspiration from a 
diviner sphere, by which virtue and happiness should be 



60 LESSON-HELPS. 

increased in the earth, human life purified, elevated, and 
prolonged, and a sure entrance into a better life beyond 
secured. 

212. On the other hand, one class of the philosophical 
mystics have sought the higher knowledge and wisdom 
for the love of them, the desire for knowledge and power 
to solve the problem of existence and the mysteries of 
being, to become masters of the secrets of nature and the 
power of life, and if possible attain the mastery of death, 
being the propelling motive of their ardent search. The 
other class have sought the development of an occult 
science and magical art, by which they could wrest from 
nature her deepest secrets and acquire the mastery of her 
occult forces, as a miser seeks his gold, to selfish, per- 
sonal, and sometimes diabolical ends. These have sought 
communication and alliance with the subtle intelligence 
and higher occult powers of invisible beings as a means 
of obtaining these ends ; thus degrading their mystical 
pursuits to the perverse processes of necromancy and 
black magic. 

213. That these various schools of mystics, each in 
their line, have attained transcendental results, whether 
to noble or ignoble ends, and in some instances of the 
most marvelous, and, as some would say, miraculous 
character, there can be no question to any mind who will 
give the subject a careful unbiased investigation. 

214. Man's noblest powers may be perverted and di- 
rected to ignoble ends and purposes, of which we have 
daily witness ; but this is only an added reason why we 
should cultivate, cherish, and put them to their legiti- 
mate use, the end for which they were bestowed. 



LESSON-IIELPS. 61 

215. The fact that God has planted these transcen- 
dental powers in the psychic and spiritual constitution of 
man, is His own warrant and command that we should 
cultivate, cherish, and put them to their legitimate use 
in the uplifting, expansion, and perfection of our personal 
and social life on earth. Only by so doing can we co- 
work with God and the Christ, in bringing to fulfilment 
in universal experience the millennial prophecies of all 
time. 

216. It was the cultivation and exercise of the trans- 
cendental powers in their normal and legitimate channels 
of activity,, that has given to the world its great seers and 
prophets, its God inspired and anointed teachers, and 
the one complete example of the perfect man. It was 
the perfect development and exercise of these powers 
that made him what he was, the Christ of God, the Ex- 
emplar of the perfect life or God's purpose and provis- 
ion for all men as His children. From his divine alti- 
tude of experience and insight, he assures us that he is 
an example for ah the world, and that whosoever follows 
his example shall "not walk in darkness " — the darkness 
of the carnal or sensuous understanding — "but shall 
have the light of life " — spiritual illumination— and shall 
do the works he did, and even greater. 

217. The great Apostle also especially enjoins upon 
the Christian disciples, not to neglect the seeking and 
exercise of the transcendental gifts of the spiritual life. 
" Concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have 
you ignorant." " For to one is given by the Spirit [the 
" Divine Afflatus," or illumination from God] the word 
of wisdom ; to another the word of knowledge ; to an- 



62 LESSON-HELPS. 

other faitli ; to another the gifts of healing ; to another 
the working of miracles ; to another prophecy ; to an- 
other discerning of spirits ; to another divers kinds of 
tongues ; to another the interpretation of tongues. All 
these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, divid- 
ing unto every man severally as he will." " But the 
manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit 
withal." 

218. With such examples and teaching we need not 
hesitate to seek the fullest realization of the divine prom- 
ise made both in the gift of the powers, and in the as- 
surance of inspired teaching concerning them. The 
noblest examples of human living have been the direct 
result of the development and exercise of these tran- 
scendental powers. 

219. Ignorance of the nature of man, and the miscon- 
ception of the character and function of these higher 
powers, resulting from this ignorance and the supersti- 
tion it involves, and which has so universally prevailed 
since history began, has prevented the normal study and 
development of these great gifts, and so prevented the 
fruition of God's gracious purpose in them. 

220. It is high time for men everywhere to awake from 
this spiritual lethargy and shake off the paralyzing in- 
cubus of traditional ignorance and superstition, and give 
themselves with a hearty interest to the study, develop- 
ment, and exercise of God's noblest gifts to them. 

221. Men need first a proper understanding of the 
nature and function of the higher powers of the psychic 
and spiritual nature, of their true relations to the cosmos 
on the transcendental planes of being, and the knowledge 



LESSON-HELPS. 63 

of a specific method of induction by which the soul may 
transfer at will its power of attention, consciousness, and 
mental action, from the objective plane of the sense-con- 
sciousness and relations to the interior and transcen- 
dental planes of direct communication with the occult 
world, or inner side and soul of things, and normal com- 
munion with higher spheres. All this we trust the ear- 
nest student will acquire, and be enabled to help others 
to, from the study through which we are passing in 
these pages, and correspondence lessons. 

222. In the Appendix we give a brief and suggestive 
sketch of the " Science of Contemplation," as developed 
and practised by the founders and devotees of the mo- 
nastic system of the Catholic Church, and its results in 
practical experience, which the student will find a profit- 
able study. A digest of all the various methods of in- 
duction by Avhich the different schools of mystics have 
sought to enter into the penetralia of things, and attain 
the higher wisdom, illumination, and mastery, will be 
given in No. 3, soon to be issued, of the " Christian The- 
osophy Series." 

223. It will be found by a careful study and compari- 
son of these different ideals, and methods of attainment 
and realization, that they all fell short of the perfect ideal 
and method of the Christ, as is demonstrated by the re- 
sult in their own lives as compared with His experience. 
A tree is to be judged by its fruit. 

224. The imperfect knowledge prevailing even among 
the majority of mystics concerning the spiritual nature 
and constitution of man, and of the character of the 
higher planes of consciousness and mental action possi- 



64 LESSON-HELPS. 

ble and legitimate to him while in the body, was a hin- 
drance to their success, and in most instances, greatly 
prolonged their efforts. 

The proper discrimination between the psychic and 
spiritual planes of the sixth and seventh sense have 
rarely been made or seemingly understood. The con- 
founding of these two distinct planes of relation and 
action has led to much confusion and perplexity of ex- 
perience in seeking spiritual realization. 

225. Most seekers have also, in greater or less degree, 
been misguided by the bias of misconception and the 
false notions of tradition and superstition, particularly 
among the Christian mystics. Yet, in spite of all this, 
very many reached the most marvelous attainments and 
experiences, approaching those of the Apostles, to the 
full extent that the Christ ideal and method were em- 
braced. 

226. The key to perfect results the Master has given, 
in seeking first Divine illumination, guidance, and help, 
through unity of will and spirit with the Father, which 
opens the spiritual consciousness (seventh or God-sense), 
emancipates from self and physical sense, and gives un- 
fettered freedom of action also to the soul's powers on 
the psychic plane of the sixth sense. 

227. Failure comes from attempting the attainment of 
occult mastery through the development and exercise of 
the psychic powers from the standpoint of the personal 
ego, by which the bias of self-interest and the standard 
of sense-experience are projected into the psychic efforts 
and vitiate the result. 

228. This is avoided to a degree in the induction 



LESSON-HELPS. 65 

by trance, which, when complete, shuts off the sense- 
consciousness, and thus prevents the impressions and 
prejudgments of sense-experience from affecting the 
mind's action on the psychic plane. The same is prac- 
tically true also of the deeper ecstatic trance, when the 
mind being wholly disentangled from sense-relations and 
sense-impressions and the sense of limitation they im- 
pose, rises to the " third heaven " or central sphere, and 
is opened by intromission to the " holy of holies," the 
unveiled Sheldnah of the Divine Presence — the " beatific 
vision." 

229. This experience came to many of the Christian 
mystics, and has also come to some who, from abnormal 
conditions of disease, have fallen into the ecstatic trance 
and become for the time "as dead men." But in all 
these cases, as in the unshackled action of the mind's 
powers on the psychic plane of the sixth sense in som- 
nambulism, this high experience was possible only from 
the complete closing of the external senses and the out- 
ward consciousness by the trance. This, however, is an 
abnormal condition in which the sense-nature is not 
subordinated to and co-ordinated with the higher spirit- 
ual consciousness and experience thus secured ; but is 
only put to sleep, from which it is awakened unchanged 
and unaffected by the high subjective experience of the 
trance. 

230. The normal opening of the spiritual conscious- 
ness is effected by voluntarily withdrawing the attention, 
thought, and desires from the things of the sense-life, 
and centering them upon God and spiritual things, in 
their Divine supremacy, which makes it necessary for the 



66 LESSON-HELPS. 

personal ego to lay down self-will and the ambitions of 
selfism, that it may know God and realize the nature of 
the divine life, through unity with him. 

231. But this requires the full waking consciousness of 
the mind and the free normal exercise of the personal 
will, choosing in perfect freedom to subordinate itself to 
the Father's will and become one with it. This volun- 
tary, glad subordination of the personal will to the Di- 
vine will brings spontaneous co-ordination and union, or 
oneness, of the human with the Divine in all things. 
And just in proportion as the personal ego and self-will 
is laid down, the impersonal ego in the consciousness of 
divine sonship and oneness with the Father rises up. It 
is simply the voluntary unity of the personal will with 
the will of the All-Father, which transforms the per- 
sonal ego into an impersonal ego, opens the spiritu- 
al consciousness, subordinates the sense-consciousness 
and activities to the higher law of the spiritual, and 
brings the whole outward man into unity with the inward 
life and spiritual nature in its divine supremacy. This 
alone casts out all bias of selfism, and emancipates the 
mind from the sense of limitation imposed by sense-re- 
lations, without at all changing the open, conscious rela- 
tions of the soul to the sense-world. 

232. Any attempt to seek divine illumination or the 
opening of the spiritual consciousness, which is the per- 
sonal consciousness of divine sonship and oneness of life 
with the Father, without this adjustment of the personal 
will to the will of the Father, will forever fail. It is this 
alone that constitutes union with God, and voluntary 
union with Him is the only means of divine illumination, 



LESSON-HELPS. 67 

which gives spiritual freedom, supremacy, and occult 
mastery. 

233. It will thus be seeu that induction by trance to 
the interior and higher planes of the soul's action and 
subjective experience, is abnormal, and does not in itself 
advance the personality one step in the divine life. This 
can be done only by the co-ordination of the outward 
with the inward man ; the law of the Spirit bringing all 
things into unity with itself. 

234. When the trance is induced by the help of an op- 
erator, as in mesmerism, hypnotism, etc., or again, as in 
the trance of mediumship, where the operator is an invis- 
ible or disembodied intelligence, the case is practically 
the same ; this does not change the personal attitude 
toward God and the law of the spiritual life ; besides, 
the mind of the subject, except in rare instances, is more 
or less under the. deflection of the operator's mind, and 
perfect independent action is impossible. If, again, 
the sixth sense is first opened and the psychic powers 
awakened to their free action in the trance, and then, by 
a gradual process brought forward to the ordinary 
waking state, as has often been done, it is still found im- 
possible to effect a perfect co-ordination of sense-percep- 
tion and consciousness with those of the psychic, giving 
complete supremacy to the latter so as to avoid the pos- 
sible delusions of self-hypnotization. The same old 
difficulty with the unregenerate personal ego rooted in 
selfism remains, and so long as this remains there can be 
no unbiased action of the mind. 

235. Nothing but the opening of the spiritual con- 
sciousness and the enthronement of the law of the spirit- 



68 LESSON-HELPS. 

ual life, can emancipate the soul and give the mind's 
powers unbiased and unfettered freedom of action on 
both the sensuous and the psychic planes. 

236. Says Thomas Yaughan in his " Magical Writings," 
"She [the soul] hath several ways to break up house 
[overcome the limitations of sense] , but her best is with- 
out disease. This is her mystical walk, an exit only to 
return. When she takes air at this door, it is without 
prejudice to her tenement." To which the translator 
and compiler, Prof. Arthur Edward Waite, adds, " This 
is an important and conspicuous instance of direct, though 
veiled, reference to the most exalted phenomena of the 
ecstatic trance, to which the common magnetic trance 
of modern psychology is scarcely the threshold or step- 
ping-stone. The ancient mystics would appear to have 
discovered an arcane process for the elevation of hypno- 
tism, by which the divine everlasting pneuma was joined 
for a period to the psyche or sensitive soul, and the spir- 
itual correspondences of the subject were extended in an 
upward direction, so as to establish an ineffable inter- 
course wfth superior forms of substance. This condition 
of lucidity is unapproached by the operations of mes- 
merism, which are formed by the intervention, and influ- 
enced by the special characterization, of another human 
mind. Now, it must be established as a radical princi- 
ple, from the true mystic standpoint, that elaboration of 
the arch-natural faculties in man can never be accom- 
plished by this process. The creation of the Magus is 
personal in the strictest sense. * Magnetism between 
tAvo individuals,' says Eliphas Levi, Ms undoubtedly a 
marvellous discovery, but to create in one's self the mag- 



LESSON-HELPS. b9 

netic condition, to induce one's own lucidity, and to direct 
one's own clairvoyance, is the perfection of magical art.' 
" Those of impressional temperament, and especially 
women, who imagine, by the subjection of their in- 
dividuality to a stronger and positive mind, to make 
progress in practical mysticism, should learn on the 
authority of practical mystics that they will not attain 
their end. Possibly the dangers of ordinary mesmerism 
in its other than healing branches, have been to some 
extent exaggerated, but it is not exaggeration to affirm 
that the many mansions of the mystic house of light are 
not to be discovered by the exploration of blind avenues." 

237. The inward illumination to which Prof. Waite and 
the great mystic Levi refer, is, as we have shown, the 
immediate result of the conscious union of the soul with 
God in the inner depths and heights of its own in- 
most and spiritual nature. It is derived from no other 
source, and can be realized in no other way. The seeking 
of this illumination need not therefore be a work of many 
years, or months, or of days even, since it is a work not 
of the head but of the heart, a simple matter of choice 
and volition, a decisive act of will. 

238. The " natural man " will ever seek to climb up to 
heaven some other way, but the one decisive question 
which confronts the soul on every hand, and which will 
forever rest with the individual soul to answer to and for 
itself, by which it determines its own destiny and experi- 
ence, is this : Will you seek the doing of your own, or 
the Father's, will ? The dominant attitude of the personal 
will toward God is our answer to this question, and our 
daily experience is the fruit of that answer. 



70 LESSON-HELPS. 

239. Days, months, years, and a long life here and an 
age in the life beyond, may be spent before the soul is 
ready, like the returning prodigal, to' lay down self and 
seek union with God in all things ; but this decisive act 
may be performed in this life, this year, this month, this 
week, this day, and this hour, if we will. But let us be 
honest with ourselves and confess that when we are fairly 
brought face to face with this question, and it is pressed 
home to our individual conscience or moral sense, like 
the men of the parable we " all with one consent, begin 
to make excuse," and like Festus of old under the appeal 
of Paid, answer : "Go thy way for this time, when I have 
a more com^enient season I will call for thee." 

240. This is the practical question then for each student 
here and now to decide for himself, and on this decision 
rest the results of this present course of study. You 
are called to seek and enter into freedom, and, in the light 
of this experience, to help others into it ; but how can you 
help others into that which you have not yourself ? 

241. In catching glimpses of these divine possibilities, 
men have eagerly sought a specific process of induction, 
by which the soul might enter into the immediate realiza- 
tion of its own spiritual life and power, and thus secure 
permanent illumination, freedom, and supremacy. The 
opening of the spiritual consciousness and its correlation 
with the sense-consciousness without the closing or sus- 
pension of the latter, is that specific process, and is the 
only process by which this experience is possible. But 
this co-ordination of the sense-consciousness with the 
spiritual, involves, as we have seen, the co-ordination also 
of the personal will with the Divine will, and is impos- 



LESSON-HELPS. 71 

sible without it : for the ego of the spiritual consciousness 
is impersonal, the son of God in unity with the Father. 
" He that hath the Son hath life ; and he that hath not 
the Son of God hath not life." 

242. The consciousness to which man is thus awakened 
is the permanent sense of impersonal being, which lifts 
the soul above and out of the circle of the ambitions of 
self and all personal considerations, into the love of truth 
and right for their own sake, and the impartial attitude 
of universal sympathy, justice, and good will. This is 
the only standpoint from which the psychometric power 
can be put forth in the unbiased perception of truth, jus- 
tice, and right, in which the mind takes on a purely in- 
tuitive action and perceives truth at first hand. 

243. In voluntarily doing or seeking to do the Father's 
will, we do not by any means throw away or lose dur own, 
but rather of our own free choice make it one with His, 
and thus secure its perfect action and guidance. This 
step once unreservedly taken, the soul enters into true 
freedom, and in self-conscious union with God finds illu- 
mination, guidance, and power. 

244. The ability to subordinate at will the sense-per- 
ception and consciousness to the interior action of the 
psychometric power of the mind, in its unfettered free- 
dom and supremacy, and the instantaneous and all-em- 
bracing grasp of its perception, is thus acquired, and the 
privilege is now open and free to all who will. 

' 245. Let each and every human being understand that 
he is as directly and vitally related to the kingdom of 
God within, through the subjective or spiritual side of 
his nature, as he is with the outward world through his 



72 LESSON-HELPS. 

sensuous nature and physical organism. Hence, lie 
may and should be as fully awakened to and established 
in the self-consciousness of this divine relationship, as 
he is to his external relations through the senses. 

246. This, as we have said, constitutes the second 
birth without which, the Master declares, no man can 
perceive, enter into, or realize the kingdom of God ; yet 
this kingdom it was His gospel or good tidings to pro- 
claim as at hand, or within reach and open to all. The 
condition of entrance into this transcendent experience, 
we repeat and reiterate, is wholly a matter of will, or of 
motive and attitude toward God. While the heart, or 
seat of the ruling motives of life, is to be reached partly, 
if not wholly, by appeals through the understanding, the 
real work to be done is with the will in the sphere of the 
heart and motives. 

247. Man will never have the wisdom and power to so 
perfectly adjust himself to his relations with envir- 
onment, as to secure the full fruition of his being in the 
realization of the exalted destiny designed and provided 
for him, until he is first adjusted by the proper attitude 
of will and motive to his higher and central relations with 
God. As these relations are of a purely moral and spir- 
itual character, the w^ork to be wrought is moral and 
spiritual, not intellectual and psychic. 

248. The full fruition of man's being in his earthly 
existence is the entire perfection of his personal, social, 
and conjugal life, in which he is to gain and hold com- 
plete supremacy over the conditions of the outward world, 
and the entire mastery of environment. But this mas- 
tery of environment and perfection of life is confessedly 



LESSON-HELPS. 73 

impossible without the perfect adjustment of the per- 
sonal will and motive to the Divine will, as expressed 
in the unchanging law of universal harmony. 

219. Man certainly has the ability to turn his attention 
and rouse his will in any direction he chooses. He has 
unquestioned freedom of choice and volition. He may 
not, indeed, effect at once the result aimed at in this di- 
rection, but if he resolve to persevere until he does, in the 
faith that he will succeed in the end, he will certainly 
triumph if the end sought be legitimate or in accord 
with the divine order. " He that willeth to do his will 
shall know," said the Master ; shall know from experi- 
ence. All the power of the universe is pledged by the 
very nature of God to the fulfilment of the Divine order 
and purpose in creation ; every resolution and effort of 
man in the accord with that order receives, therefore, the 
re-inforcement and co-operation of the Divine will and 
power, and must succeed. " If God be for us, who can 
be against us ? " The more fully our faith is grounded 
in this conviction, the more buoyant will be our hope 
and faith, and the more vigorous our will and effort. 

250. That the perfect life on earth is attainable in this 
way, we have the unqualified assurance of the Master, 
and its practical demonstration in his life. "All things 
are possible to him that believeth." 

251. The adjustment of the personal attitude in will, 
purpose, and action to the divine order, is a necessity to 
the integral development and harmonization of the in- 
dividual and social life of man, and so of his rightful su- 
premacy over all external conditions of environment. 
Hence the emphasis the Master put upon the first step 



74 LESSON-HELPS. 

in the new education which holds the divine promise of 
such stupendous results for him. " Seek ye first the 
kingdom," etc., " and all these things shall be added." 

252. There is nothing arbitrary in this condition of 
attainment, nor in its injunction by the Master. It is 
legitimate and normal to the very nature and constitu- 
tion of things in which all the great doctrines of the Mas- 
ter's teaching were based. There certainly is no more 
compromise of the personal freedom of choice and action, 
in this adjustment of the soul to the kingdom of God, in 
our moral and spiritual relations, than there is in the ex- 
ternal adjustment to our physical relations. 

253. The sailor adjusts his vessel to the movements 
of the wind and tide, that he may utilize their power to 
the furtherance of his ends, and has the legitimate exer- 
cise of his personal freedom in the act. So with all the 
great forces of the physical world ; man is enabled to 
utilize them by adjusting himself to the law of their 
action. 

254 The most sensuous and selfish mind recognizes 
this necessity, and complies with it on the physical plane 
without thought of compromise to his personal liberty 
in the act, or of anything arbitrary, irrational, or unjust 
in the necessity. Indeed, man finds his normal life and 
freedom in and under these relations to the physical 
world only through his perfect adjustment to them, and 
wisely exercises his personal rights and freedom in the 
very act of adjustment. Nor can he thus cheerfully ad- 
just himself to these relations in the spirit of reconcilia- 
tion with them, without thereby securing his freedom, 
health, success, and happiness in them, because they 



LESSON-HELPS. 75 

were ordained in infinite wisdom and beneficence to this 
end. 

255. The recognition of God in and over His world, 
in the infinite wisdom and goodness of His economy, 
will give this spirit of reconciliation and cheerful con- 
formity therewith. This principle holds equally true of 
every sphere of man's relations to the cosmos, and of 
his attitude in and under them. He has, therefore, but 
to really perceive and understand his moral and spir- 
itual relations to God from the central and highest plane 
of his being, to find the supreme motive for seeking 
at once to adjust himself in reconciliation of will and 
attitude to these divine and all-important relations. 
Nor can he thus adjust himself to this central and high- 
est sphere, without bringing his whole personal life under 
the direct and immediate inspiration and perfecting in- 
fluence of the divine wisdom and goodness. 

256. The difficulty is, and ever has been, that few have 
realized or understood their own spiritual nature, and 
through it their specific relations to the Divine and Ab- 
solute, and the immediate, stupendous possibilities these 
involve. The teachers themselves have too often been 
" blind leaders of the blind." 

257. One finds freedom, fellowship, and delight in fam- 
iliar intercourse with men, only through the proper 
adjustment of his own will and attitude to his true rela- 
tions with them. So he will find the spiritual freedom, 
supremacy, illumination, and moral perfection of his 
being, in constant communion and fellowship with God 
as Father, only through the recognition and glad adjust- 
ment of himself to these relations as child to Parent. 



76 LESSON-HELPS. 

" Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the 
kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter 
therein." 

258. There is but one motive which prompts the ma- 
jority of men to seek to adjust themselves to their phys- 
ical relations and conditions, and that is the personal 
good to be derived therefrom ; considerations of pure 
selfism. 

259. There may, however, be two different motives 
prompting men to seek to know and to do the will of 
God. The first would be the recognition of that will as 
involving the perfect, or at least the best way of reaching 
the highest results, and this without any special reverence 
for God. The second would be prompted by the glad 
recognition and love of God as the All-Father, and the 
realizing sense of the royalty and divinity of his own 
nature as a child of God, which leads to spontaneous 
loyalty, and desire to be at-one with Him for His Own 
sake, because He is the Father and Himself the supreme 
good. 

260. The first is a prudential, and essentially a selfish, 
motive, yet even this, when faithfully followed, leads, 
through experience, to the final awakening of the second, 
which is wholly above the selfish spirit. Under the 
first motive, gratitude is awakened by the final recogni- 
tion of the Divine goodness ; from this in turn is 
awakened love ; then comes at - onement in spirit, and 
with this illumination spiritual freedom, supremacy, and 
organic perfection. 

261. In this unreserved giving of himself to the Fa- 
ther's perfect will and way, man does not lose, but gains, 



LESSON-HELPS. 77 

and in no other way can gain his perfect freedom, 
supremacy, and perfection of being in and over all his 
relations to environment. And when this consecration 
is prompted by the supreme and spontaneous love of the 
heart, as it sooner or later will be, he will find therein 
the divinest joy and beatific experience possible to his 
being. 

262. Two spiritually awakened souls united in the 
inexpressible felicity of a genuine conjugal affection, 
find their supreme delight and deepest joy in living 
in and for each other, and count no personal sacrifice 
too great to advance the other's good, and find exaltation 
therein because it is a service of love. So in the sub- 
ordination of the personal will to the will of the Father 
from the love and adoration of the heart, there is no 
servile attitude or sense of arbitrary humiliation and loss 
of personal freedom, but of emancipation and divinest 
exaltation in the act. Indeed, the ineffable bliss experi- 
enced by mated souls when brought to the full realization 
of their inseparable union, is the one only experience, 
under strictly human relations, which fitly sj T mbolizes or 
at all represents that divine sense of unutterable joy 
and inextinguishable blessedness found in the conscious 
union of the soul with God. 

263. To awaken that love of God which leads to this 
holy union with and beatific experience in Him, we 
have but to take and hold the attitude of loyal children, 
and, as especially emphasized in these pages, persist- 
ently contemplate Him in the divine perfection of His 
Fatherhood, love, and providence, until this vision of God 



78 LESSON-HELPS. 

becomes, as it sooner or later will, the supreme reality 
or beatific vision of the soul. 

" I cannot hide that some have striven, 
Achieving calm, to whom was given 
The joy that mixes man with heaven. 

Who, rowing hard against the stream, 
Saw golden gates of Eden gleam, 
And did not dream it was a dream. 

But looking upward, full of grace, 
They prayed, and from a happy place, 
God's glory smote them on the face." 



APPENDIX. 



A STUDY OF THE MYSTICS. 

THE SCIENCE OP CONTEMPLATION AND STUDY, OR THE METHOD OP 
ATTAINING SPIRITUAL, ILLUMINATION AND MENTAL ENLIGHTEN- 
MENT, AS DEVELOPED AND APPLIED BY THE MYSTIC FATHERS 
OP THE EARLY CHURCH. 

Taken from " The Life and Labors of St. Thomas of 
Aquin, by the most Eev. Becle Vaughan." (Catholic 
Publication.) 

To gaze steadily and fixedly upon an object, and take it in — to be- 
come one with it by contemplation, has a profound effect upon the soul. 
If the object be pure and elevating, the soul through' its influence will 
be purer and nobler than before. 

To look upon an object in order to analyze its parts, to compare and 
divide, to balance and weigh it, and to pass it through a process of sift- 
ing and manipulation, possesses also its special charm ; but it is the charm 
not of subjection, but of mastery, not of repose, but of activity. Some 
minds— according to the mould in which they are cast — have more 
natural sympathy wifrh the first, others with the second, method. Each 
is good within its own sphere, both are pernicious when they outstep 
their sphere. Both are necessary for the perfection of the human 
mind. For man has a will to love and an intelligence to know. He 
can fix himself on an object in faith ; or probe and analyze it with 
his reason. . . . Quies is monastic ; inquisitiveness is dialecti- 
cal. 

The Fathers, in their cast of mind, were essentially monastic ; indeed, 
the monastic system has been a traditionary one in the Church from 



80 APPENDIX. 

the earliest ages, and rests upon two fundamental facts, studied by all 
deeply thinking minds, viz. : first, that Christ— who taught a Divine 
philosophy as well as a Divine theology — has never said " Blessed are 
they that see and then believe," but "Blessed are they who have not 
seen ; " and again, " Love is the fulfilling of the law." Man's primary 
scope is, not to know, but to love ; not to see, but to believe. Belief, 
and love, these are the two master-passions of all monastic minds -look- 
ing up with confidence, crying out " My Lord and my God," and then 
with all the passion of the soul embracing the sovereign good. . . 

The solitaires of China and of India, the Chaldean and the Egyptian, 
sought after a higher goodness and truth than they found within them- 
selves ; they sought caves and mournful solitudes, that they might un- 
disturbed, commune with the Great Spirit of the skies. . . 

In the West, of which I am now speaking, St. Benedict was the first 
and only legislator of monasticism. He saw the immense force of the 
religious life of the East, such as it was. He reorganized it, putting it 
on a more practical and more perfect footing. The Easterns buried 
themselves in solitudes, there to remain and converse with God ; St. 
Benedict had humanity in view : he hurried to the rugged fastness, to 
live to God, and having lived to God, to come forth and subdue the 
world, through the synthetic influence of the cross. His system is writ- 
ten in what, par excellence, is called " The Holy Kule : " a rule which 
St. Gregory, St. Thomas, and others declare to have been immediately 
inspired by the Holy Ghost. Its whole scope demonstrates that St. 
Benedict held that " love " was power. . . . He found love in the 
mountain cave. . . . Love is not the offspring of analyzing, and 
dividing, and arguing, but it is the child of contemplation, and peace. 
How is this love acquired ? The Holy Pule lays down the method. 
Love is acquired by two things, viz., by contemplation, and by purity 
of heart. He who has a pure heart and contemplates truth, loves 
truth. The contemplation will be clear in proportion as the heart is 
pure, and the heart will be pure as the spirit is humble. 

Dependence upon God as the Father, and yielding the 
personal will to His in perfect trust of His infinite wis- 
dom and goodness is the law. 

The two grand principles on which that Pule — which has given its 
color to every other — is founded, are the contemplation of love and the 



APPENDIX. 81 

practice of humility. But what is the ohject of contemplation ? The 
ohject is Christ. [It should be remembered that Christ is here regarded 
by St. Benedict and all the Mystic Fathers as God incarnate as the 
Saviour of men, hence Christ to their thought stood as the objective im- 
personation of love.] Christ seems incarnate in this Kule. . . . 
Christ is seen in the sick ; Christ is served in the guests. The monk is 
" to deny himself to himself and follow Christ." The community is all 
one iu Christ ; and the Holy Legislator insists that nothing is to be 
placed before the love of Christ. . . . 

Now, it is self-evident that, in proportion as the soul contemplates 
Christ, and the heart is pure, the will elicits perfect acts of love. Again, 
in relation of man to his Maker, there is always a disproportion, which 
becomes more evident as he advances in love and purity of heart. In 
the same degree as the creature knows what the Creator is, he realizes 
his own position as a creature. . . . What then do we call the re- 
sult in the mind of the realization of this proportion ? Surely, Rever- 
ence. The love man has for God is an adoring love. Love, reverence, 
adoration, purity— these are the four pillars of the grand monastic 
system. Those who were real monks were thoroughly possessed by 
these gifts They created the atmosphere [mental] in which they lived, 
and consequently in which they thought. They formed the character 
of the man and the temper of his mind, and monks could no more 
think independently of their influence than we can think outside the 
grooves of space and time. . . . 

St. Bernard was the great founder of the monastic method. . . . 
Bernard was scholastic, but he was pre-eminently contemplative. . . . 

The tendency of St. Bernard's mind is evident from the subject 
matter of his most important works. His treatise on grace and free 
will ; his book on contemplation ; his writings on the love of God ; 
and then his tract on the degrees of humility, all point to the one ob- 
ject which possessed his mind. Love and faith, purity and humilitv, 
these make up all the strivings and aspirations of St. Bernard's life. 
. . . In fact his treatise on grace is simply a preparation for his 
treatise on the love of God. Here Bernard is evidently in his element. 
The cause of our loving God is God himself ; the measure of love is to 
love without measure. The very voice of nature within man loudly 
calls upon him to love God. Love is not mercenary [" seeketh not her 
own"]. Love is the reward of love. Love is not attained at once. 



82 APPENDIX. 

There are four steps to perfect love : It begins with self ; next, man 
loves God selfishly ; then he 'loves him unselfishly— for His own sake ; 
and lastly, he loves not God alone for His own sake ; but he loves him- 
self and all other things for the love of God. That is the highest per- 
fection of Divine love. But the fullest perfection of this form is only 
then experienced, when the soul, for the moment, is carried by mysti- 
cal rapture as it were beyond itself. 

But love cannot be treated without touching upon its counterpart — 
humility. What purity of heart was to St. Anselm, that humility was 
to St. Bernard. These great, pure minded thinkers laid the principal 
stress on that which seems to be almost entirely disregarded at this day. 
It was evident to them that the soul could not contemplate truth if its 
eye— the heart— were not clean, as it is to us that we cannot see when 
our eyes are shut. They saw distinctly what we forget, or ignore, viz. : 
the intimate connection, more intimate than that of body and soul, 
between the intellectual and moral faculties — between the intelligence 
and will. 

Humility is the virtue, says the Saint, by which a man looks meanly 
upon himself, through a perfectly accurate appreciation of himself 
This is the way to knowledge. There are twelve degrees before man 
arrives at the full blaze of enlightening truth. But he declares that 
humility is not enough. In order to possess the highest form of knowl- 
edge, love must be added to humility. When man has arrived at the 
highest form of life through love and humility, then he begins to enter 
into the mystic region. The first step here is consideration, which is 
an intense application of the mind acting discursively upon some given 
truth. The next is contemplation, which passing beyond the discursive 
action of the reason, rests fixed intently on the object. The effect of 
contemplation is to produce admiration and wonder ; so much so that, 
being overcome by the power of the majesty before it, the spirit is 
lifted, as it were, out of itself, and for the time is plunged in the ocean 
of illimitable truth. As a drop of water falling into wine seems to be- 
come wine, taking its taste and color ; ... as the air penetrated 
with light seems to become an illumination, and no longer air ; so in 
the other world [the ecstatic state], will the soul be carried away with 
God. For the creature thus possessed of God marvellously forgets it- 
self, and, altogether leaving self, wholly goes to God, and from hence- 
forth adhering to Him, becomes one spirit with Him. 



APPENDIX. 83 

Richard of St. Victor's, a Scotchman, like many other students of 
this epoch, . . . came to Paris, attracted by the fame of the schools. 
He entered at St. Victor's and was professed under the first Abbot, 
Guilduin. . . . What is particularly aimed at here, is to give an 
outline of his mystic teaching regarding the methods of contemplation, 
not merely because he brought to its fulness that which St. Bernard and 
Hugh had labored at before him, but because to appreciate the moral 
and ecstatic life of St. Thomas of Aquin, some knowledge of the rela- 
tions of the mind with contemplation and spiritual intuition is re- 
quisite. . . . 

His first principles regarding knowledge are identical with those of 
the holy men that went before him. Faith comes first. If we do not 
believe we cannot understand ; knowledge must enter by faith ; it must 
not indeed rest in the entrance, for it should always hasten on to in- 
terior and profound things, and by earnest study and diligence seek to 
advance daily in the understanding of those things which we hold by 
faith : these are the best riches — these are the eternal delights. Again, 
the first study of a manly mind ought to be how to govern its affections, 
and the second, how to command its thoughts. 

Before treating of Richard's theory of contemplation, a word must be 
said of his view of the human soul. He starts with the assumption that 
the soul is a simple substance, which gives life and sensibility to the 
body. He divides the spiritual portion into spirit and soul, according 
to the more or less elevated attributes belonging to each. Every reason- 
able man possesses two gifts — one of reason, by which he knows ; an- 
other of affection, with which he loves. Reason points to truth ; affec- 
tion to virtue. . . . Considered in their relation to the object, our 
faculties are threefold : The imagination, the reason, and the intelli- 
gence [intuition]. The reason stands between the imagination and 
the intelligence. The office of the imagination is to seize and hold 
sensible impressions, the reason is the instrument of discursive thought, 
by which we advance, by way of premise and conclusion, toward the 
truth. The intelligence [intuition] is a still higher power which, as the 
senses seize, by immediate apprehension, their proper objects, grasps, 
in an immediate manner, its proper object. The intelligence is pure, 
inasmuch as it excludes the imagination ; and simple, inasmuch as it 
excludes processes of reasoning. 

Now to these three powers of the soul, correspond three methods of 



84 APPENDIX. 

knowledge : thought, meditation, and contemplation. . . . Thought 
comes from the imagination ; meditation from the reason ; and con- 
templation from the intelligence. Thought wanders about here and 
there, without direction, slowly, as at will ; meditation, with great labor 
of the soul, strives, by hard and difficult ways, toward the given end ; 
contemplation is carried, with freedom and great facility, wherever the 
power bears it, to its proper object. Contemplation is seeing truth pure 
and naked, without any cloud or shade standing in the way [pure intui- 
tion]. . . . The foundation of the contemplative life consists first 
in the practice of virtue. The heart must be pure if a man wishes to 
see God. It is the old method of monasticism, which runs through the 
hearts and minds of the learned saints of God. . . . The second 
foundation-stone of the mystic life is self-knowledge. In fact, love and 
humility, according to the monastic principles of the " Holy Rule," are 
the two bases of the whole fabric of the spiritual life. The soul is a 
mirror, in which the picture of God"s glory and beauty loves most to re- 
flect itself, and in which, in a particular way, we can see and know 
Him. The soul was created to the likeness of God ; and if His mark is 
seen in nature, how much more in that spirit which was created after 
the image of Himself. Hence, if a man would wish to contemplate 
God, he must purify and cleanse this mirror by his efforts after virtue 
and moral perfection. . . . [*' Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God."] 

God is the proper object of contemplation ; but the soul can also fix 
itself upon other objects. According to the subject matter, there are 
six steps of contemplation. The first is in, and according to, the im- 
agination. This looks upon the beauty and variety of creation, and 
thus is drawn to wonder at and honor the wisdom and goodness of God. 
The second is in the imagination, and according to reason. This 
marvels at and considers the causes of the world of sense " according to 
reason," because the conclusions of reason are necessary for proceeding 
from cause to effect. 

The third is in reason, and according to imagination. Here we con- 
clude from the facts of sensible nature to the world of ideas, which are 
brought before the intelligence, ' w In reason," because the reason alone 
can move from sensation to the world of ideas ; " according to imagina- 
tion," because that faculty provides matter for the operation of reason. 
The fourth is in reason, and according to reason. At this step, the mind 



APPENDIX. 85 

is fixed on the unseen world of spirits, their nature and attributes. It 
is done 'in reason and according to reason," because the imagination 
is now dropped, and the spiritual element alone is the object of thought. 
The fifth step is above reason, but not beside reason. It rests immedi- 
ately in God, inasmuch as He can be known by our reason. To this 
step belong those truths which we know by reason, but cannot compre- 
hend. . . . The sixth and highest step of contemplation is above 
reason, and beside reason. Its object is the impenetrable mysteries of 
God which transcend all reason. 

There is something supernatural in all these steps of contemplation : 
for if a man would raise himself up in contemplation, he must do so 
through the illumination of grace. No mortal can look upon the mys- 
teries of God unless he be lifted up hy God Himself to the vision ; all 
the more, since sin has wrought a thick veil over the eyes of men, which 
can only be removed by the action of the grace of God. 

Contemplation is also distinguished according to its intensity, into 
three grades : the first is enlargement, when the vision of the soul is 
wider and stronger ; the second is elevation, when through the influence 
of Divine light [inspiration] the soul is cairied beyond its natural capa- 
bility, still without being lifted out of the general conditions of its em- 
pirical knowledge. The third is alienation by ecstas} r , in which, through 
the action of Divine grace, the soul is placed in such a position that all 
thought of present things, all consciousness of empirical knowledge 
vanishes, and the soul is wholly absorbed in the vision of things Divine. 
The first grade results from the operation of the soul itself ; the second 
from the action of human activity and grace [inspiration] combined : 
the third is solely dependent on Divine grace. 

Ecstasy can spring from three causes : from the influence of great 
devotion, from wonder, and from exultation. But the gift alone comes 
from the free grace of God, though man can, and should, dispose him- 
self for its reception by virtue and pure-heartedness. As the bride 
decks herself out for the worthy reception of the bridegroom, so should 
the soul of man ornament itself for the reception of so high a grace. 
But all this is a mere preparation ; it can never bring about of itself the 
ecstatic state. It is for man to spread out the wings of ecstasy, but it is 
for God to set them in motion. A man, however, can lead himself 
toward that perfection, so that the entrance into the ecstatic state very 
greatly depends upon his own will ; but even this dependence is condi- 



86 APPENDIX. 

tioned by the grace of God, which is powerful in those who, in morality 
of life, have advanced to high perfection. 

The ecstasy of the spirit can take place in each stage of contempla- 
tion. It oftenest takes place in the two highest stages. And then, 
without any veils of creatures . . . hut in its pure simplicity, the 
soul gazes upon truth. Into this vision the spirit wholly ascends, and 
the motions of the lower faculties are quieted. The spirit, as it were, 
soars above itself, above the memory of external things and the sense 
of the body, and is wrapt in the contemplation of supernal truth. 
When, in this rapture, the mind is carried away in the contemplation 
of Divine things above itself, man becomes forgetful, not only of those 
things which are outside of himself, but of those things which are 
within him. He becomes wholly self-forgetting, consciousness of self 
ceases, the multitude of thoughts exist no longer before the mind, and 
the discursive powers of the reason are subdued under the might of 
contemplation. The natural light of reason is absorbed by the higher 
light of contemplation. . . . 

Since man in the state of ecstasy is forgetful of all but the object of 
contemplation, it follows that this is a condition of the highest rest and 
contentment. And as the state of rapture depends upon the grace of 
God, so in the ecstatic, man can advance his love of God, and unite 
himself with Him ever more and more intimately. 

But in these higher regions of the spirit, Satanic deception can easily 
come in. And, therefore, just as Christ had two witnesses of his trans- 
figuration — Moses and Elias — so should the soul, in those realms of con- 
templation, be accompanied by a test of truth : Holy Scripture. 
Richard held in suspicion all truth which was not confirmed by the au- 
thority of the Sacred Books. 

Such is the outline of the scientific attempt made by Bichard of St. 
Victor's to systematize the facts of the contemplative life. He is far 
from teaching that the mystic method of gaining knowledge is the ma 
ordlnaria. He teaches the reverse. It # is essentially a supernatural 
state, the result of free grace, and the earnest practice of the soul in 
the perfection of a moral life. Thus he escaped the error of confusing 
the two orders, and the accusation which has with justice been brought 
against Scotus Erigena, of tending, at least in a dangerous way, to pan- 
theistical idealism. As long ns discursive methods of the reason, by 
premise and conclusion, are held as the via ordinaria to the knowledge 
of God, and the mystic method of vision is looked upon as extraordinary 



APPENDIX. 87 

and purely supernatural, there will be no danger of falling into the ex- 
tremes which, for want of a positive theology, the mystics of heathen- 
dom and heresy seem never to have been able to escape. 
[Simply whether the effort is made from the standpoint of the personal 
ego or the impersonal ego.] 

The difference between the doctrine of Erigena and St. Bernard is 
this : that the system of the former tends to annihilate the individuality 
of the creature, whereas the system of the latter, though he makes this 
union as intimate as is possible, asserts the individuality of the creature 
in its most perfect unity with God. 

The work of St. Bernard, Hugh, and Richard of St. Victor's, for this 
portion of Church-science, may be considered fundamental. What the 
saint and the theologian began — the saint through the experiences of 
his own spotless soul, the theologian through holy meditation and the 
application of science— that Richard's powerful fantasy, clear, logical 
head, and holy reverence, which kept him steady in the dizzy heights, 
completed. The Fathers of the Church had emancipated pure scien- 
tific speculation out of the hands of the heathen, and our scholastics 
had perfected their work ; but on the science of contemplation — con- 
templation which has resulted in such marvellous influences on the 
world — nothing had ever been done in the same way. ... So it 
must be considered that Hugh and Richard of St. Victor's laid the 
broad foundations of their wondrous science — the science of the saints — 
upon which succeeding speculators built. In the works of St. Theresa, 
aud, particularly, of the standard mystic theologian of the Church, St. 
John of the Cross the influence of these two great and pure thinkers 
is evident in every page. 

One of the best illustrations of the practical results of 
this mystic science and practice in the busy life of a great 
scholar, teacher, and preacher, was perhaps the example 
of St. Thomas of Aquin ; and a brief extract from the 
testimonies to his characteristics, will be not only inter- 
esting but highly suggestive. 

FROM THE LIFE OF ST. THOMAS. 

No doubt the saint's practice in teaching, and the accuracy he 
acquired by writing from an early age, were of great assistance to him 



88 APPENDIX. 

in developing his powers. Then, he possessed another gift, very valu- 
able in the middle ages — particularly so in the thirteenth century, and 
more especially useful to a religious man — a changeless calmness and 
self-possession. [Doubtless the immediate result of his habitual con- 
templations.] Partly through education — through the vicissitudes of 
life ; greatly by character ; partly through cultivation of mind, and 
principally through grace — he possessed his soul in patience. . . . 
Corrado de Luessia. who knew him intimately, gave a most interesting 
testimony on oath to the simplicity and purity of his life. He declared 
him to be ''a man of holy life and honest conversation, peaceful, sober, 
humble, quiet, devout, contemplative, and chaste ; so mortified that he 
cared not what he ate, or what he put on. Every day he celebrated 
with great devotion, or heard, one or two masses ; and except in times 
proper for repose, he was ever occupied in reading, writing, praying, or 
preaching." "I saw him,'' says Corrado, " leading the above life." To 
tliis was joined a great confidence in spiritual illumination. His 
science, says Raynald, " was not acquired by natural talent, but by the 
revelation and infusion of the Holy Ghost, for he never sat himself to 
write without having first prayed and wept. "When he was in doubt, 
he had recourse to prayer, and with tears he returned — instructed and 
enlightened in his uncertainty." . . . 

It was not after the modern fashion that the Saint preached. His 
power did not proceed from violence of manner, fierce gesture, theatri- 
cal display, or artificial warmth. There was nothing of brute oratory 
about him. The exaggerated and excited method of announcing the 
Gospel, imported from the continent — and which might suit the market 
place, but ill-beseems the dignity of the pulpit — was unknown to the 
great Dominican. Doubtless, he felt that the truth of God is too sub- 
lime to admit of much human heat in its expression ; that a loud man- 
ner does not tend to make proof more cogent ; and that the Spirit of 
the Gospel is gentle, calm, and self-possessed ; yet firm, earnest, and 
commanding. Tucco says that " he preached a Lent at Naples on the 
one text Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum," and that " during the 
whole time he was seen to keep his eyes closed in the pulpit, and his 
head in such a position as if he were looking into heaven.'' Yet it does 
not follow because the eyes were closed, that he did not give full ex- 
pression to his thoughts. . . . Our saint preached ten years in 
Naples, as well as in Paris, Rome, Cologne, and other places. The 



APPENDIX. 89 

people reverenced his word as if it had come direct from the mouth of 
Christ. 

As A Teacher. — The quiet, meek young man — so mortified, 
so recollected — began to let now that fountain which had been " filled 
with the waters of wisdom " during his long and deep meditations. 
His influence over young men was remarkable. It far surpassed — as 
will be seen— that of any other master. As no other, he could influence 
the minds of his disciples with an ardent love of study. They were 
conscious that his teaching had something about it of another world ; 
and the feeling crept over all, and finally mastered them, that he spake 
as one "having power." . . . From his youth, he had dedicated 
himself to wisdom as his spouse. The Bollandists say that this spouse 
of his drew him to herself in such a manner, that nothing could' over- 
come a mind which, in the possession of one reality, possessed every- 
thing. Only one thing he asked for — that was wisdom. Even in con- 
versation, his mind clung to its One only Rest — though speaking to man, 
his eye was fixed on God. 

Rainald, his confessor, knew for certain that the Saint gained every- 
thing by prayer. On one occasion, during class, the conversation fell 
on the great Angelical ; Rainald burst into tears, and exclaimed, 
" Brothers, my master forbade me, during his life, to tell the wonder- 
ful things he did : one thing I know of him, that it was not human 
talent, but prayer, that was the secret of his great success. He never 
discussed, read, wrote, or dictated, without begging with tears for il- 
lumination." Tucco says that he thus acquired all he knew. This was 
his daily prayer : " Grant me, I beseech Thee, O merciful God, 
ardently to desire, prudently to study, rightly to understand, and per- 
fectly to fulfil that which is pleasing to Thee, to the praise and glory of 
thy name." ... He wept for the sins of others as if they had been 
his own, yet so spotless was his mind that he could hardly bring him- 
self to think that man could sin. No one could look on him in conver- 
sation without receiving the grace of a special consolation. To meet 
his eye and hear his voice, was to warm the heart and elevate the 
soul. . . . 

It is often the custom of good men to moralize on the beauty of 
peace and gentleness- on the charm of solitude and silence ; but they 
do not often go beyond this ; they do not often sink into the depth of 
the human spirit, and seek to discover the hidden spring which pro- 



90 APPENDIX. 

duces the great effect. He alone, who has lived to God and to him- 
self, can fully realize the strength and vigor produced within the soul 
by prayer, silence, solitude ; by dwelling under One eye alone, and 
communing with One only Spirit, and by opening out the whole man — 
the entire being — like a flower to" the sun — toward the warmth and light 
that is produced by heaven. Great souls, souls made of fine and noble 
elements, have it in them ; it is in their nature, when alone, to seek 
him who is above, and to find their freedom and their companionship 
with the world that is unseen. Open the life of any saint ; speak to 
any man who has really given himself to God. Ask him of his silent, 
solitary hours — whence come all his sweetness and his spiritual light — 
and he will have but one answer to give. It comes from basking and 
living in the sun, and by letting the spirit expand itself and grow, with 
its own spontaneous rectitude, toward Him who made it ; from Whom 
it originally came ; and to Whom finally it will have to go. Ask the 
gentle, silent Young Aquino, how he spent his time. He spent it drinking 
in the brightness of heaven, and filling himself with the strength of God. 

[A brief glance at the discipline of "the School at Paris," at which 
St. Thomas was so long the leading instructor, will interest the reader 
of this sketch of his private life.] 

The regulations for students coming to the school at Paris were very 
stringent. . . . Robert of Sorbonne gave a very interesting instruc- 
tion (De Conscientia) concerning what the student should do to profit 
by his study. This is a resume : 

" The scholar, who would profit by his position, ought to observe six 
essential rules : 

"1. He ought to dedicate one certain hour to one specified piece of 
reading, as St. Bernard advises in his letter to the ' Brethren of Mont 
Dieu.' 

"2. To fix his attention upon what he is going to read, and not pass 
on lightly to something else. ' There is the same difference,' says St. 
Bernard, again, ' between reading and studying, as between a host and 
a friend — between a salute exchanged in the street and an unalterable 
affection.' 

"3. To extract, each day, one thought, one truth of some sort, and 
to engrave it in the memory with special care. 

"4. To write a resume — for unwritten words are blown away like 
dust before the wind. 



APPENDIX. 91 

"5. To join with his companions in the ' disputations,' or infamiliar 
conversations — this practice is even of greater service than reading, he- 
cause it results in clearing up all douhts and all the obscurities which 
have been left by reading on the mind. 

" G. To pray — for this is, in point of fact, one of the best means of 
learning. St. Bernard teaches that reading should excite the affections 
of the soul, and that such influences should be turned to advantage in 
elevating the heart to God, without on that account interrupting the 
reading. ... 

" In the acquisition of knowledge, the pleasures of flesh must be ab- 
stained from, and creature comforts must not be embraced. There 
were at Paris two masters, bound together, of whom one had seen much, 
read much, and remained bent day and night over his books ; hardly 
did he take time to say a single Pater. This man had only four dis- 
ciples. His companion had a worse-furnished library, was less carried 
away by study, hearing mass every day before going to his lesson ; and, 
nevertheless, his school was full. 'Now, how do you manage ?' the 
first asked him. 'It is simple enough,' the second replied, smiling — 
' God studies for me ; I go to the mass, and when I return, I know by 
heart all I ought to teach.' 

"Meditation is not only becoming in the master : the good student 
ought to take a walk in the evening on the banks of the Seine, not to 
play, but to repeat his lesson or to meditate. " 

THE LAST DAYS OF THE MYSTIC LIFE OF ST. THOMAS. 

As he approached the end of his great labors on the " Summa," his 
spirit, which had from his boyhood been living in the world unseen, 
became more and more absorbed by heavenly things. His trances and 
ecstasies became more frequent, his converse with the other world more 
preternatural, his visions and his gift of prophecy, his absorption and 
his knowledge of men's thoughts, more astonishing. The Hand of God 
seems to have been placed upon him with stronger pressure, and that 
bright transfiguration, which is perfected in heaven through the Beatific 
Vision, appears to have almost begun on earth. As the fruit in the 
sunlight, day by day, ripens, growing in fulness* and deepening in 
color, till at length it is ready to drop golden from the bough, so the 
great Angelical seems to have advanced steadily and gradually to his 



92 APPENDIX. 

spiritual perfection, till mature for heaven, he was gathered by a Divine 
Hand, and garnered into the Everlasting Home. 

Indeed, he not only dwelt in the Unseen World, hut he absolutely 
conversed with its inhabitants ; so that what was hidden from the gaze 
of ordinary mortals became visible to him — what we see, was, as it were, 
withdrawn from him ; what is veiled from our senses was miraculously 
opened before his eyes. For instance, at Paris, his sister, who had died, 
appeared to him in vision, said she was in k purgatory, and implored 
masses for her soul ; the Angelical requested his students to say mass 
and pray for her. Shortly after she appeared to him in Rome, and 

/ said she was in glory. He asked her about himself. She said : " Thou 
standest well, brother, and will join us speedily ; but a greater glory is 
prepared for thee than for us. Preserve, however, what thou hast. ' 
He asked her after Landulf. She said he was in the penal fire. Again, 
while praying, according to his custom, in the Church at Naples, B. 
Roman us, whom he had left at Paris as Master of Theology, stood before 
him. S. Thomas approached his friend and said: "Welcome here! 
When did you arrive ?" "I have passed from this life," replied the 
figure, " and am permitted to appear on your account." Overcome by 
the apparition for a moment, then collecting himself, the Angelical 
said : "In the name of God, then, I adjure you to answer me these 
questions : How do I stand ? and are my works pleasing to God ? " 
" Thou art in a good state, and thy works do please God," was the reply. 
" Then what about yourself ? " inquired the Angelical. " I am now in 
eternal life," answered Ronianus, "but I have been in purgatory." 
"Tell me," continued St. Thomas, "the answer to the question which 
we have so frequently discussed, whether the habits which are acquired 
in this life remain to us in heaven?" " Brother Thomas," replied 
Romanus, "I see God, and do not ask me more." "How do you see 
God ? " rejoined the Saint ; "do you see him immediately, or by means 
of some similitude?" The other answeied: "As we have heard, so 
have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts ! " and then instantly 
vanished. So habitual had the ecstatic life become to the Ange^cal, 
that at last he could scarcely fix his mind on contemplation without be- 
ing carried away in rapture, without being lifted off the ground en- 
tranced. At length he was so absorbed in divine things, that even the 
" Summa" itself failed to interest him. He finally ceased writing after 

' a marvellous rapture which seized him, and shook his whole frame, 



APPENDIX. 93 

while celebrating mass in tlie Chapel of St. Nicholas, at Naples. After 
this mass, contrary to his invariable custom, he did not sit down to his 
desk ; nor would he consent to dictate anything ; and though engaged 
on the tractate concerning "Penance,'' in the Third Part of the 
" Summa," he put away his pen, and became wholly lost in contempla- 
tion. Even Reginald, who knew him so intimately, could not account 
for this. He said, with amazement, to his master : " My Father, why 
hast thou cast on one side so great a work, which thou didst begin for 
the glory of God and the illumination of the world ? " All he replied 
was: " Non possum. I cannot write any more." Reginald, fearing 
lest overwork had affected his master's brain, was continually imploring 
him to continue writing-, but the saint ever made the same reply : " I 
cannot, Reginald, for everything that I have written appears to me as sim- 
ply rubbish." From this time forth, St. Thomas may be said to have lived, 
not on earth, but in heaven. Shortly after his great ecstasy he visited 
his sister, the Countess of San Severino, whom he tenderly loved. Even 
on the journey he was perfectly carried away, and it was with difficulty 
that his socius could get him to the castle gates. His sister, seeing him 
approach, hurried out to meet him, but he, being so absorbed, scarcely 
noticed her. She turned terrified to Reginald, and exclaimed: " How 
is this, Brother Thomas is altogether tranced, and will scarcely speak a 
word to me ? " Reginald replied : " Ever since the feast of St. Nicho- 
las he has been like this, and from that day forth he has not written a 
word." Then he began again with great earnestness to beg the Angel- 
ical to say why he refused to write, and how he had become thus beside 
himself. Being pressed with such importunity, St. Thomas at length 
exclaimed to Reginald : " I adjure thee by the Omnipotent and Living 
God, by thy holy vows, and by the charity which binds thee now, not 
to reveal during my lifetime what I am about to say ! " And then he 
added : " All I have written appears to me as so much rubbish com- 
pared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." 

In this sketch of the religious life and experience of St. 
Thomas we have a striking illustration of the truth of the 
doctrine set forth in these Lesson Helps, concerning il- 
lumination, and the impossibility of obtaining the pure 
unbiased vision of truth except from the standpoint of 



94 APPENDIX. 

the spiritual nature, which holds us to the Divine and 
Absolute. Until the activity of the personal ego and the 
bias of external education and traditional authority are 
entirely laid down, and the desire is to know the absolute 
truth as it is held in the mind of God, and this is sought 
in perfect confidence that it will be opened to the soul 
direct from His Spirit, independent of all mediatorial 
agencies, we are not in the attitude for complete divine 
illumination. We may develop and exercise the psychic 
powers and receive more or less of inspiration from the 
higher plane of the spiritual and Divine, but so long as 
the pre-impressions and pre-conceived opinions of the 
external or traditional standards of authority are allowed 
to mingle with and interpret the psychometric inrpres- 
sions, perceptions, and the spiritual insjDirations, Ave can- 
not have the perfect spiritual illumination, nor can the 
psychic powers become the permanent "gifts of the 
Spirit." The inspiration or illumination of others may 
lead us to this attitude, but until the inward revelation is 
direct to our own souls from the Divine, we have not 
reached the perfect union with God which alone brings 
complete illumination and immediate guidance from Him. 
We must remember that each soul holds the same rela- 
tions to God and the world, that is held by any and all 
other souls, and has therefore the same access and priv- 
ilege of any and all other souls under these relations ; 
hence no soul lias taken its own true attitude until it de- 
sires and seeks with perfect confidence to unite and walk 
consciously with the Father in all things, and thus to in- 
terpret all things in the immediate light of the Divine 
wisdom as revealed direct from the Father, and not to 



APPENDIX. 95 

interpret the inward revelation by any external standard 
of supposed revelation through others. Eevelation 
through other inspired souls can be authority for us only 
as an aid to our attaining the true attitude for the full 
and immediate revelation of the Father in our own souls. 
"■Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth in me, 
the work that I do shall he do also," were the words of 
the Christ. ^ 

The mystic fathers in their science of contemplation 
recognized three grades of advancement, " according to its 
intensity," by which the soul was opened more and more 
to inspiration from the Divine, until complete emancipa- 
tion and perfect illumination was attained. " The first is 
enlargement, when the vision of the soul is wider and 
stronger ; the second is elevation, when through the in- 
fluence of Divine light the soul is carried beyond its 
natural capability, still without being lifted out of the 
general conditions of its empirical knowledge. The third 
is alienation by ecstasy, in which, through the action of 
Divine grace, the soul is placed in such a position that 
all thought of present things, all consciousness of em- 
pirical knowledge vanishes, and the soul is wholly ab- 
sorbed in the vision of things Divine." 

This is complete emancipation from subjection to that 
which is external to the soul, and the entire circle of the 
activities of the personal ego, and the limitations of the 
sense-consciousness, into the freedom of the impersonal 
ego and the mastery of the spiritual consciousness under 
Divine illumination in conscious oneness with the Father. 
No soul should rest satisfied until this experience is 
reached, and all advanced experiences of other souls are 



96 APPENDIX. 

but examples of our own possibilities, to be recognized 
as such and thus made to stimulate and encourage us to 
press forward to a like or greater experience ; for, as the 
Lord Christ said, greater even than he had then reached 
was possible to his followers. 

" The first grade results from the operation of the soul 
itself [the personal ego in its own activity] ; the secoud 
from the action of human activity and grace [inspiration] 
combined ; the third is wholly dependent on Divine 
grace" [full Divine illumination]. 

Among the saints and mystics of the Christian Church, 
no better example of a self-consecrated and inspired 
scholar and teacher can be selected than St. Thomas. 
He earnestly sought, and unquestionably received, divine 
inspiration in all his work. But sincerely believing that 
certain generally accepted doctrines had been divinely 
revealed as fundamentel truths, the bias of this tradi- 
tional teaching mingled with his own inspirations and 
served as the principle of their interpretation. The 
" Summa," to which he gave the full strength of his in- 
spired genius to make it the cream of his life-work, was 
to be the perfection of theological science, and to be ac- 
cepted as such by the Church, which recognized the in- 
spiration and masterful genius of the Saint ; yet for all his 
inspiration, and the life-work of his exalted mentality as 
a consecrated genius of inspiration and scholarship, 
when he became fully emancipated from the bias and 
limitations of externally received standards and ideals, 
by union with God in the realization of the impersonal 
ego, he discovered that what he had thus written was 
" rubbish," and he would not complete it. Had he com- 



APPENDIX. 97 

mitted to writing what he then saw of the truth, it would 
(if accepted) have revolutionized the doctrines and utterly >^> 
destroyed the ecclesiasticism of the Church. He doubt- 
less saw that the time was not ripe for this, and that 
more harm than good would have resulted from such 
disclosure. This condition was seen and foretold by 
the Master in His parable of the wheat and the tares. 
" Let both grow together until the harvest : and in the 
time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye 
together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to 
burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn." The 
tares of misconception and false doctrine from the sen- 
suous understanding had so intimately mingled and 
grown up with the pure wheat of Christ's gospel, that 
the wheat was not then sufficiently developed and rip- 
ened in Christian thought to endure the complete sepa- 
ration. 

The harvest time foretold by the Master we believe is, 
however, now upon us, and the sound of the reapers 
sent of the Master are heard in the field. The tares of 
misconception, false doctrine, paralyzing dogma, and 
blind authority are being separated from the original 
gospel of spiritual freedom proclaimed by the Christ, and 
bound in bundles to be burned in the fire of a discrimi- 
nating and righteous criticism. 

Had the mind of St. Thomas been free from the bias of 
traditional misconceptions and false doctrines, and held 
only the Christ ideal of man's immediate divine possi- 
bilities as a spiritual being and son of God, the Saint, on 
opening his soul to Divine inspiration by contemplation, 
would doubtless have reached that final emancipation 



98 APPENDIX. 

from the external, in the complete illumination and free- 
dom of the spiritual consciousness, at a much earlier 
date, and have written what would need no subsequent 
repudiation. 

Had this been true of the Church, and especially of the 
early fathers who formulated their science of contempla- 
tion, they would have taken up and carried forward to 
perfection the higher life of spiritual freedom and su- 
premacy so divinely inaugurated by the Apostolic 
Brotherhood under the Master's leading. 

It was the mingling of the tares of Jewish and pagan 
superstition with the truth of the Christ revelation, that 
prevented this result. The second coming of the Christ 
ideal, separated from all that hides its perfection and 
perverts its inspiration, is needed and, indeed, is already 
dawning upon the world. 

St. Thomas and the early fathers were honestly labor- 
ing under the huge misconception that the doctrine of a 
morally ruined and lost race, for which God, in the per- 
son of Christ, took on our humanity that He might open 
up a way of salvation through an expiatory offering 
which should atone for the sin of the world, when 
accepted by faith, Avas a divinely revealed truth. With 
the bias of this fundamental error held as a revealed 
and basic truth, each advancing revelation to the soul, of 
the love and goodness of God through an unfolding in- 
spiration, was necessarily interpreted in the light of this 
external understanding, and all development of Christian 
thought, however comprehensive and brilliant, was made 
to conform thereto. 

The early fathers seeing the marvelous power devel- 



APPENDIX. 99 

oped by the contemplative life among the Orientals, 
adopted their practice of " Yoga " and asceticism, and 
transformed it, under the Christian ideal, as held by 
them, into their improved " science of contemplation " in 
monastic seclusion. The difference lay in the differing 
conceptions held by the Christian fathers and those of 
the Orientals concerning the nature of God and of the 
human soul, and of the conditions of its existence and 
further development after what we call death. 

The evocations and invocations of the Orientals were 
changed into the prayers, masses, and invocation of 
saints of the Church. The contemplation of Brahma in 
the innumerable manifestations of power in the world, in 
the spirit of the elements, air, water, fire, etc., each of 
which was specifically invoked by the Orientals, was 
changed to the contemplation of God in the one mani- 
festation in Christ as the Saviour of men. 

The boundless love and mercy of God was recognized 
and contemplated in His infinite condescension to take 
upon Himself our nature and outwork a vicarious atone- 
ment in our behalf, without at all perceiving or daring to 
consider the utter absurdity of the fundamental proposi- 
tion involved. 

Supposing this to be God's own revelation of truth, 
the contemplation of His infinite condescension in our be- 
half but opened and intensified the corresponding con- 
ception to the mind, of the terrible reality and horror of 
the fate from which such infinite sacrifice was needed to 
save us. Hence the lurid pictures of hells and demons, 
existing to capture and torment forever the souls of men, 
with which the literature and preaching of the Church 



100 APPENDIX. 

have been filled, from the early fathers down to out own 
time. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all this, the mystic fathers 
and many of the lesser devotees of the Church in all the 
centuries, did, through the practice of contemplation, at- 
tain a marvelous spiritual inspiration and insight, and a 
high degree of psychic development and corresponding 
occult power, miracle working, etc. 

Their psychic visions, however, were filled with object- 
ive representations of their subjective mental states and 
traditional notions or beliefs. Visions of hells, demons, 
and distorted caricatures of heavenly scenes, were min- 
gled with better glimpses and purer visions of spiritual 
and divine realities. 

"With no proper understanding of the laws and nat- 
ure of psychic vision, or of the psychic powers and the 
sphere of their activity, nor of the influence of pre -im- 
pressions and pre-judgments upon the partially awakened 
sixth sense, they were often unable to discriminate be- 
tween the truth and its distortions in their minds, and 
thus to interpret correctly their experiences. 

The abnormal conditions of mentality, as well as of the 
nervous system, often induced by their long fasts, extreme 
austerities, and terrific strain in numerous ways upon out- 
raged nature, awoke visions as monstrous and terrible 
as those which seem so real to the unfortunate victims 
of delirium tremens, and none the less abnormal and un- 
real because the result of religious fervor and the in- 
temperate zeal of a fanatical superstition. 

Emancipated from the absurd dogmas and fictitious au- 
thority of superstition which so distorted the psychic ex- 



APPENDIX. 101 

periences of many of the earlier mystics, let us turn to 
the perfect example of the Master, and in its light, per- 
ceive and avoid their mistakes, while we recognize and 
appreciate each step they made in the right direction, 
and its relation to the splendid results so often reached 
by them, and be thereby encouraged and strengthened 
to follow Him in the perfect way. 

The early fathers and founders of the monastic sys- 
tem never dreamed of taking the earthly life of Jesus as 
a literal example to be followed and actually reproduced 
in its essential features in the practical experience of all 
men. They regarded Him as a special Divine Incarna- 
tion, and therefore another order of being, taking on hu- 
manity for a special vicarious work of an official char- 
acter for man, which he was unable to do for himself, 
and not as an example and illustration of the higher 
possibilities of the nature of man brought to fruition in 
him, and open to all through the following of his ex- 
ample. 

This distorted conception of the character of the 
Christ and of His work for man, and of the salvation He 
proclaimed to the world, ran through and biased all their 
thought, teaching, and efforts ; and the pictures it awoke 
in their minds were projected into their psychic experi- 
ences and regarded as spiritual revelation confirming 
their accepted teaching, the error and absurdity of which 
broke upon the soul of St. Thomas when he at last came 
into the clear light of the full spiritual vision. 

Had they caught the real message of the Gospel of 
Jesus in its fulness at the first, that supreme and all-im- 
portant proclamation of the direct and universal Father- 



102 APPENDIX. 

lioocl of God, and thus the spiritual nature and trans- 
cendent possibilities of man as the child of God, to be 
realized in experience by the recognition of and loyalty 
to this Divine nature and relationship, as exemplified in 
the Master, it would have changed the character of their 
entire thought, teaching, and efforts at individual sal- 
vation. 

"With this supreme ideal in their practice of con- 
templation, they would have found early intromission 
into the light of the spiritual consciousness, and entered 
into the full realization of the freedom and supremacy 
of the spiritual life in the flesh. The pagan tares or 
superstitious notions of vicarious offerings and sacri- 
fices, done away in Christ, would never have crept in to 
pervert and corrupt the pure Gospel of Jesus with mon- 
strous pictures of hells, devils, and deep damnations of 
an offended Deity to be saved from. But the recogui- 
tion of an omnipresent and compassionate heavenly 
Father whose love, and care, and providence embrace 
every world and every sphere and every being, and hold 
them safely in His omnipotent hands, would have filled 
their souls with the light of hope, courage, faith, and love. 

With a true understanding of the salvation promised 
by the Christ through the following of his example and 
instruction, the realization of divine sonship, and the 
supremacy of the spiritual and perfect life in the flesh, a 
divine incarnation or " the Word made flesh," they would 
not have so despised the body, but would have cherished 
and honored it, by making it pure, holy, and perfect, as 
the divinely appointed instrument of the soul's true work 
in the world. 



APPENDIX. 103 

Though the Lord Christ spent forty days in retirement 
and fasting dining his season of spiritual initiation and 
complete induction into a condition of perfect and per- 
manent spiritual supremacy, as a preparation for the 
mighty work of a world's emancipation, upon which he 
was to enter, he was no ascetic, nor did he institute or 
command any of the ascetic practices and monastic orders 
adopted by the mystics of the Christian Church. These 
were borrowed from heathendom and belong to a condi- 
tion of life antedating the revelation involved in the per- 
fect ideal and method opened to men by the Christ. 

Though again presenting in a living example the per- 
fect life, and teaching, and illustrating the perfect way of 
life, Jesus did not condemn but commended the conse- 
crated efforts of those who had not the perfect light or 
method of reaching it. In speaking of the great fore- 
runner who was a thorough recluse and ascetic, and draw- 
ing a striking contrast between his life and method with his 
own, he commended him, saying: "Wisdom is justified 
of all her children." " John the Baptist came neither 
eating bread nor drinking wine ; and ye say he hath a 
devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking ; and 
ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine bibber, a 
friend of publicans and sinners ! But wisdom is justi- 
fied of all her children" (Lu. vii. 33, 35). 

Those who have not yet caught the perfect ideal and 
method of the Master are not to be condemned for follow- 
ing an imperfect model and way, however erroneous, so 
long as they are seeking earnestly the highest and best 
they know. But why should these earnest seekers be 
left to their imperfect ways when there is a perfect one 



104 APPENDIX. 

provided for them ? Was not this very missionary work 
of calling attention to the perfect ideal and certain Way 
of the Christ, the real commission he gave to his dis- 
ciples ? 

This sketch of the method of contemplation practised 
by the mystic orders of the monastic system, -would be 
incomplete without some well-authenticated facts of ex- 
perience corroborating what has been said of the working 
of the s}'stem and its results. These we will give from the 
same authority that furnished the sketch of the method, 
" The Life and Writings of St. Thomas of Aquin." 

A VIVID PICTUEE OF THE IDEAL THAT POSSESSED THE MINDS 
OF THE EAELY MYSTIC FATHEES. 

It cannot x>e too vividly realized that the great doctrines of Christian- 
ity broke in upon the world's darkness, as if the night were suddenly 
lighted up by a flame bursting from the heavens. It is difficult to throw 
one's self into a state of mind altogether different from that in which 
we habitually live. Xot less astonishment and a less shock was the 
opening of heaven's gates to the heathen, than would it be were the 
darkness of midnight suddenly, without any warning, to turn into the 
brightness of day upon us. He who had been crawling all his life after 
creeping things and adoring them in his slavish, melancholy, passion- 
ate way, is taught to look on the beautiful face of Christ, and to believe. 
Superstition gives way to genuine belief, and the horrors of an un- 
certain future, and the insecurity of the present, disappear, as religion 
teaches man a certain creed with certain prefects, and secures to him 
a firm and healthy hope in future happiness. 

These doctrines wholly transformed the minds of those who received 
them ; their entire moral nature was revolutionized. Men of honest 
purpose, of deep thought, of generous impulses, shrunk from the moral 
leprosy around them. 

They perceived that the world was steeped in wickedness, and they 
knew that it would perish. They felt deeply convinced that death is 



APPENDIX. 105 

certain, that there is a hell beneath, a heaven above, that sin is to be 
repented of, that there is a judgment to come, that man has but one soul 
and that is immortal ; and, finally, that the love of Christ is beyond 
all price, to gain which love is to possess all things, and to forfeit which 
is to suffer irreparable loss. To love Christ, to save their souls, and to 
maintain truth [which they supposed this doctrine or these statements 
to be], these were the master thoughts and motive principles of action 
in many noble minds during the early struggle. 

These men fled from the contamination of the vast luxurious cities 
into the boundless deserts, to "work out their salvation in fear and 
trembling." The world might go on and have its fill of wickedness, 
but they tear themselves away to meditate on death and on the judg- 
ment to come, and on the everlasting recompense. 

This is a true and vivid picture of the ideal and the 
motive which possessed the souls of the men who 
founded the monastic system, and started the practice of 
contemplation in the early Church. Their attention was 
wholly diverted from the Christ ideal of salvation in a 
perfect life here and now, and the corresponding motive 
of working for the immediate enthronement of the king- 
dom of God in universal experience on earth, and cen- 
tered on a personal salvation from the hell, and to the 
heaven of another world. It is easy, therefore, to see 
how the strong bias of this powerful impression upon 
their minds should pervert and distort their psycho- 
logical and spiritual experiences, which, under the true 
ideal and motive would have resulted in such harmonious 
and beautiful realization. The author goes on to say : 

These mighty men, these Fathers of the desert, formed a race of them- 
selves. They are the primeval men of the Oriental Christianity, 
the granite rocks upon which a super-structure might be raised which 
should endure forever. [Yes, the historic Church was built upon these 
semi-pagan fathers, rather than on the Apostles. They were the foun- 
dation-rock, rather the Christ whom Paul preached.] They seem as full 



106 APPENDIX. 

of stability as the pyramids and sphinxes among which they dwelt 
From yonth to old age would they live in the desert, on roots, dates, 
leaves, or dry bread, and water gushing from the rock. Their life was 
a continual fast, they slept on the bare giound, they fought with demons, 
they encountered the hyena and the bear, they wore scarcely any cloth- 
ing, they continually prayed and toiled, they were stern men, with in 
tensest passion controlled by severest discipline, they were assaulted by 
terrific temptations, thej r had iron frames, they lived to a patriarchal 
age, they were simple, fundamental, and direct in their teaching : to 
love Christ, to trample on the flesh, to resist the devil, to quench bad 
thoughts, to pass through life, and to get to heaven — such is the sum- 
mary of their theology. 

Doubtless many of the thoughts they called bad were 
the pure upspringing intuitions of their spiritual nature, 
the very voice of God in their souls in protest against 
their monstrous misconception and perversion of the 
Christ Gospel ; and the supposed insinuations of the 
devil were often the holy protest of their better nature, 
outraged by their fanatical abuse of the body's normal 
functions. 

St. Paul (not the Apostle) lived on a few oats and a little water, and 
fought sleep as he would a tyrant. St. Hilarian. who at fifteen years of 
age " went naked into the wilderness, though armed with Christ," and 
whose countenance beamed with a heavenly radiance, lived in a morass, 
with gnats and flies, amidst reeds and rushes. Peter the Simple became 
a hermit when sixty-eight. . . . Ammon was twenty-two years in 
the desert. . . . Anuphrius was seventy years in the wilderness. 
Spyridion was a shepherd in the isle of Cyprus. Abbot Mark was shut 
up in a cave thirty years. Didymus dwelt ninety years alone. Abbot 
John lived three years on a bare rock, without covering, in a mournful 
solitude. Auxanon, when a child, inhabited a mountain cave. Some 
passed half a century without seeing a soul. James of Msibus lived 
for years in caverns and forests, on roots and leaves, clothed in a goat 
skin. St. Auxentius dwelt in a wild mountain, and St. Zeno in a tomb. 
Some lived in fissures in the rock, or on pillars, or in holes in the earth, 
or in woods and caves, or in the midst of dank marshes, or among the 



APPENDIX. 107 

ruins of palaces or of temples of the sun. So powerfully had the influ- 
ences of the unseen taken hold of men in these terrible times, that what 
was begun by Paul, and was continued by Anthony, Maccarius, Pacho- 
mius, Moses, Arsenius, and others, grew into gigantic proportions. 

In more modern times, religious men were called after their founders, 
e.g., Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc. In the first ages they 
took their names from the place which they inhabited, as the solitaires 
or monks of Mount Leethis, Tabenna, Nitria, and Canopus in Egypt. 
Anchorets lived in private cells. The monks of Mount Cassius, near 
Antioch, lived in caves ;. others in tents or cells ; the Cenobites lived in 
common ; the Sarabaites, whom St. Jerome calls the pests and banes of 
the Church, were vagrants, wandering without rule wherever they had 
a mind. They loved to dwell in cities and castles, and to make a show 
of piety when they were not overtaken in riotous excesses. 

The Stylites, or Pillarists, lived on pillars. Simeon Stylites was the 
founder of this system. He lived about the time of the council of 
Chalcedon. He had a disciple named Daniel. The Simeon Stylites 
Junior dwelt sixty eight years upon a pillar. It is said that Alpius re- 
mained seventy years on one, and that two choirs of virgins and one of 
monks attended him alternately day and night, singing psalms and 
hymns with him. There were also, though at a later date, religious 
men in Constantinople, about the middle of the fifth century, who were 
called u watchers. " Their office was to so combine that the divine ser- 
vice should always be going on, something like the "perpetual adora- 
tion " of our own day. Studius, a rich Roman noble, joined the order. 
He built a monastery for the brothers, which was called a Studitse— 
probably the first religious institute that took the name of its founder. 
Lozaman speaks also of the "grazers" who lived on the mountains, 
never living in houses, or eating bread or meat, or drinking wine. 
They prayed in hymns and psalms till the time came for their dinner; 
then each would take out his knife, and search the mountain-side for 
roots or herbs to make a meal. 

Of all the Fathers of the Desert, St. Anthony is the greatest, for he 
has left a deeper mark upon the world than all the rest. He was the 
patriarch of solitaires, the keen discerner of spirits, the mighty example 
after whose pattern the greatest men of the Church have modeled their 
lives. 

The grand simplicity of primeval principles, of foundational example, 



108 APPENDIX. 

is exhibited in liim. There is but one other more overpowering to the 
imagination than he, and that is Elias the Thesbite. As others moulded 
themselves on Anthony, so Anthony formed himself on Elias, and thus 
brought about an intimate ascetical relationship between the two cove- 
nants. [Here is a striking illustration of the fact that the monastic 
system of ascetic practices was founded, not upon the ideal and method 
of the Christ and the Apostles, but upon that which ante-dated them, 
in both Jewish and Pagan religious life, and from which it was wholly 
borrowed. Anthony sought his ideal and pattern, not in a Christian 
Apostle or the Master even, but a recluse prophet of a former age, of 
whom John the forerunner was the latest representative preceding 
Christ, and of whom the Christ said ' ' No greater prophet has risen 
among men," " yet I say unto you, he that is least in the kingdom of 
God is greater than he." And John himself, speaking of the Christ for 
whose greater work he came to prepare the way, said "I [my method] 
must decrease, but he must increase. " So Anthony, whose ideal pattern 
and method were pre-Christian, became the model for the Christian saints 
and mystics that came after him in the mother Church.] 

Elias, Anthony, Basil, Benedict, Dominic, Thomas of Aquino, these 
are the links which connect together, in a harmony which testifies to 
truth, the heroic teachings of God's purest and noblest servants. The 
broad principles of St. Anthony's life must be indicated, the grand 
corner stones must be ointed out, in order that the reader may examine 
the basis on which the splendid edifice of religious perfection is con- 
structed. 

The one living image in Anthony's mind was Christ. 

It should be remembered that this image of Christ in 
the mind of Anthony, was not a man, the Son of God 
made perfect through voluntary union of will, spirit, and 
character with the Father, but God himself veiled in 
humanity, working out a substituted righteousness and 
propitiatory offering for man as an official salvation, into 
which he was to enter by sharing with Him in the cross of 
self-denial and crucifixion of the flesh. 

This solitary lays down the monastic principle of St. Benedict. " He 
exhorted all," says St. Athanasius, "to prefer nothing in the world to the 



APPENDIX. 109 

lore of Christ. His one toil in life was to fit himself for heaven. His 
great wrestling was with the devils, and with his own thoughts. His 
marked characteristics were indomitable perseverance and stability in 
an arduous life. He never looked back, he abode in the wilderness, he 
fasted rigorously, his bed was the ground, and he strove with hell dur- 
ing a space of nearly ninety years without a single break." 

His history is briefly this : — His parents were noble Egyptians of 
middle Egypt. Like St. Benedict, he despised letters from early youth ; 
like St. Benedict, he, as a child, preferred solitude as his best com- 
panion. When he was eighteen his parents died. His ardent, generous 
mind loved to dwell on the mighty acts of the Bible saints. He knew 
the Scriptures by heart. He could not get over the thought of the 
Apostles abandoning all for Christ. Like St. Francis, going into the 
church one day, he heard the words : "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell 
what thou hast, and give to the poor ; and come, follow me, and thou 
shalt have treasure in heaven ; " and he was so deeply moved on hear- 
ing these other words: "Be not solicitous for to-morrow," that he rid 
himself at once of all his possessions. He wished to exchange this vis- 
ible world for the invisible kingdom. He took lessons of perfection from 
holy men; "he stamped upon his memory their devotion to Christ, 
and the mutual love which all in common possessed." Satan, perceiv- 
ing how formidable he was likely to become, buffeted him. But 
Anthony spurned his impious suggestions, ' ' setting his thoughts on 
Christ, and on his own nobility through Christ. " This was Anthony's 
first struggle against the devil ; or rather, this mighty deed in him was 
the Saviour's, who condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of 
the Lord might be fulfilled in us. 

He watched so much, that he often passed whole nights without 
sleep ; and that not once, but often, to the astonishment of men. He 
ate once a day, after the setting of the sun [a common practice of the 
Oriental initiates] and sometimes only once in two days, often even 
in four ; his food was bread with salt, his drink nothing but water. 
. . He would mostly lay on the bare ground. 

Yet, in spite of his terrific austerities, the spirits of the air attacked 
him like vultures, and almost destroyed him. He shut himself up in 
a tomb. A multitude of demons set upon him and smote him till he 
swooned away under their blows. He was taken for dead and carried 
out of the tomb. But he slipped back again at midnight, and cried out 



110 APPENDIX. 

to the demons : " Here am I, Anthony ; I do not fly from your stripes ; 
yea, if you do yet more, nothing shall separate me from the love of 
Christ." The devils tried another plan ; at midnight, while Anthony 
was in the tomb, he suddenly heard a great crash ; the walls of the 
place seemed to burst asunder, and the foul fiends poured in upon him, 
changing themselves into the shape of all manner of hideous beasts 
and loathsome reptiles. [Can any sane mind, unwarped by traditional 
superstitions, fail to see the similarity of this abnormal experience of 
Anthony to the deranged nervous and psychic condition of delirium 
tremens ? It matters not the cause of the deranged and perverted 
activities, whether it is intemperate austerities or intemperate indulg- 
ences, the similarity of the result is unmistakable.] The tomb swarmed 
with fierce lions, savage bears, bulls, Snakes, asps, scorpions, and 
wolves, and all of them, each making its own frightful noise, rushed 
upon him to destroy him. Though almost speechless from their blows, 
he cried out to them : "A seal to us and a wall of safety is our faith in 
the Lord." After this the Lord said to him in a vision : " Since thou 
hast withstood, and not been worsted, I will be to thee always a succor, 
and will make thee become famous everywhere." 

And Christ poured into him supernatural strength, and he yearned 
to give himself with still greater abandonment than ever to the service 
of the crucified. 

He was now thirty-five years old. He set off for the wilderness. The 
devils tried to seduce him, putting the likeness of a silver plate in the 
way, and dropping bags of gold. But he buried himself in a crevice in 
a mountain, and here he wrestled and struggled with the fiends of hell, 
who with yells and clamor and in fearful shapes attacked and molested 
him. And thus he continued serving God, battling with temptation, 
for the space of twenty years. [Nothing but a monstrous misconception 
of the nature of God, of man, and of salvation could suggest that these 
exercises of a twenty years' seclusion was the serving of God.] 

Hundreds now came to him to gather wisdom from his lips. His 
friends, who had not seen him for many 3 r ears, marvelled at two things 
in him : at the vigor of his body — for it ' ' had kept the same habit, and 
had neither grown fat nor lean from fasting, nor worn by fighting with 
the demons " — and at " the purity of his soul." And here St. Anthony 
makes purity identical with self-control and unmoved serenity. . 
" They wondered again at the purity of his soul because it was neither 



APPENDIX. Ill 

contracted as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by 
laughter or by depression ; for he was neither troubled at beholding a 
crowd, nor overjoyful at being saluted by so many, but was altogether 
equal, as being governed by reason, and standing on that which is ac- 
cording to nature." 

He who lived in the sand, under the burning eye of the sun, amid 
demons and wild beasts, thus for a hundred years, possessed his soul in 
patience. It was this mighty force of character, this divine stability, 
which made him the stem and root of the Tree of Life. 

So Anthony groaned daily, considering the mansions in heaven, and 
setting his longing on them, and looking at the ephemeral life of man. 
. . . He left his wilderness, and during Maximin's persecution 
ministered to the confessors in the mines, and to those in prison. . . . 

Now he returned to the desert, and increased still more his severity 
with himself. He put on, and wore till his death, a beast's skin with 
the hair turned inside. He never washed, and no one ever saw him 
unclothed till he was dead. 

So importunately did the multitude press around him, on account of 
the startling miracles he worked in Christ's name, that he hurried away 
from them into the " inner desert," and at length he came to a very 
high mountain : a stream of clear cold water gushed out of its base ; a 
few neglected date-palms were the only vegetation which met the eye. 
He tilled a patch of ground on the other side the mountain ; the wild 
beasts came and upset his work ; but he forbade them, and they obeyed ; 
the demons still swarmed about him ; tumults, and sounds of many 
voices, and crashing of arms, broke through the solitude. At night, the 
mountain was fall of savage monsters, glaring with their eyes, and 
making the darkness hideous with their bellowing and roaring ; all the 
hyenas of the wilderness crept out of their burrows at dusk, and sur- 
rounded Anthony where he lay, gaping at him with white teeth and red 
jaws, and threatening to tear his body into atoms. But the cross and 
the love of Christ were too powerful for the phantoms. This was 
Anthony's one stay, the image of the crucified in whom he "trusted as 
Mount Sion." When he uttered the simple words : "I am the servant 
of Christ," the devils fled away, pursued by his words as by a whip, said 
St. Athanasius. . . . His energy against heresy caused his fame to 
spread into distant cities, among Greek philosophers, potentates, and 
priests. He became known as "the man of God." His supernatural 



112 appp:ndlx. 

power was acknowledged on all sides. His fame spread even to the 
courts of kings. Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, wrote to him 
as to a father, asking his advice. ... It would take too long to 
speak of his wonder-working power, of his visions, and his prophecies ; 
he saw the soul of Ammon carried up to heaven, he cured Fronto of a 
grievous disease, he Drought health to the Christ-bearing maiden of 
Laodicea, he cast out devils, and cured numberless sicknesses, in the 
name of our Lord. 

So beautiful and striking was St. Anthony's personal appearance, that 
men could pick him out of a multitude. " His countenance had great 
and wonderful grace ; and this gift too he had from the Saviour." . . . 
When over a hundred years old, "he remained uninjured in all his 
limbs ; for his eyes were undimmed and whole, so that he saw well, and 
not one of his teeth had fallen out, but they only wore down to the 
gums on account of his age ; and he remained sound in hand and foot ; 
and in a word, appeared ruddier and more ready for exertion than all 
who use various meats, and baths, and different dresses. " 

St. Anthony was born 251 ; adopted a solitary life 270 ; went into the 
desert 285 ; supports St. Athanasius 355 ; died 356 ; St. Athanasius 
writes his life 364. 

This graphic sketch of but a small portion of the 
wonderful life of this remarkable man, gives a fair insight 
into the conditions of that early age when the founda- 
tions of the great Catholic Church of Eome were being- 
laid, and of the ideals which possessed the souls of its 
founders. We can see how the monastic system 
sprung up as the legitimate fruit of those ideals, and 
under the consecration and devotion it fostered, we 
need not wonder at the marvelous experiences both 
psychic and spiritual that came into their lives, nor at 
the occult power thus developed and subject to their 
faith, so generally deemed ■ miraculous. The Easterns 
had developed and exercised a like power by practically 
the same processes, but under different ideals. What 



APPENDIX. 113 

may we not expect, then, when holding the true ideal of 
the All-Father and the divine possibilities of the human 
spirit, we adopt the perfect way of the Christ in seeking 
conscious union with the Father and the unclouded il- 
lumination of the Spirit which this divine union secures ? 

In spite of the distorted ideals and misdirected efforts 
of so many of the mystics, Christian and non-Christian, 
great heights of inspiration and power of service were 
reached by them. So, with the key of a just discrimina- 
tion in his hand, the student will find a mine of great 
spiritual wealth in an unbiased study of the different 
schools of mystics, and especially of the " lives of the 
saints " in the Christain Church, Catholic and Protestant. 

The key of a just discrimination is a proper under- 
standing of the spiritual nature and constitution of the 
human soul in its threefold relationship to the cosmos. 

The true psychology or science of the soul is yet to 
be formulated and perfected. The psychology of the 
schools in the past has been the formulated results 
of speculations upon the recognized facts of conscious- 
ness, and these varying with the cogitations of each inde- 
pendent thinker, no one system has been of universal ac- 
ceptance. The range of each system has corresponded 
with the individual conception of the author concern- 
ing the true nature, source, and limitation of conscious- 
ness. 

Most of the psychologists of the past whose authority 
is recognized in the schools of the present, have supposed 
sense perception and experience to be the source, founda- 
tion, and limitation of all actual intelligence acquired by 
man in this world ; hence, whatever facts of consciousness 



114 APPENDIX. 

and experience they found transcending the plane and 
sphere of the senses, and originating from a supersensu- 
ous and transcendental plane and sphere of perception and 
experience have generally been classed as either hallucina- 
tion, miraculous interposition — as in the recognized inspi- 
ration and prophecy of Scripture — or, in certain perplex- 
ing phenomena, as the direct instigation of the " devil." 

So strong has been the prejudice thus engendered in the 
minds of the educated classes, that men of science and 
letters, for several generations have utterly ignored and 
refused to recognize or give any attention whatever to the 
psychic phenomena and facts of transcendental percep- 
tion and experience, which, though always spontaneous- 
ly occurring more or less, have been a marked feature of 
the last two centuries, and especially the last half of the 
present century. And if during that time any recognized 
scientist or philosopher accepted the facts and attempted 
to give them a candid, unbiased study, he was at once 
ostracized, and cast out of respectable recognition, as a 
charlatan, etc. 

Our own age has the honor of being the first to enlist 
the attention of the scientific world, and organize societies 
for the special, careful, and extended study of all psychic 
phenomena and experience from the standpoint of sci- 
ence, and to institute the deepest possible research into 
the realms of the supersensuous and transcendental. 

Though this work has but fairly begun, the light al- 
ready thrown upon the psychic nature and transcendental 
powers of man is revolutionizing the mental philosophy 
and psychology of the schools, and the newly recognized 
facts of supersensuous perception and experience are 



APPENDIX. 115 

being rapidly gathered up and formulated into the be- 
ginnings of a new and all-embracing psychology or sci- 
ence of the soul. 

One of the most useful and helpful books on this sub- 
ject is " The Philosophy of Mysticism, by Baron Du 
Prel." The author, a profound thinker and philosopher, 
as well as a thorough scientist and luminous writer, 
gathers up the well-authenticated facts of transcendental 
experience involved in dream, somnambulism, and trance, 
and considers them in the most careful, thorough, and un- 
biased manner. 

Though his conclusions will be startling to many who 
have never before given the subject-matter serious 
attention, the suggestions as well as demonstrations 
offered will be emancipating and extremely helpful to 
all, and of especial value to the earnest seekers after the 
higher life. 

The author believes that somnambulism furnishes the 
key to all mystic and transcendental experiences. He 
demonstrates by it the fact of a transcendental ego in 
man, holding direct, specific relations with a transcen- 
dental world (or, as we should say, with the transcendental 
or inner side of the one world to which we are externally 
related through the senses), and having an intelligence 
and experience entirely independent of and greatly tran- 
scending that of the sense ego and sense experience. 

No synopsis or brief extracts could give any adequate 
representation of the ground covered by the comprehen- 
sive considerations of this book ; so we will not attempt 
it. The student should take the first opportunity to read 
and study it for himself. No romance could be more 



116 APPENDIX. 

thrillingly interesting to a seeking mind, though it is 
wholly exoteric in its treatment. 

The facts now being gathered up, analyzed, and report- 
ed by the British and American Societies for Psychical Re- 
search, and other societies for the same work, will play 
their part in the development of the new psychology. 
In the meantime there have been many individual inves- 
tigators and thorough students who have been for years 
anterior to the now popular Psychical Research Societies, 
engaged in independent research in this very field, who, 
through the traditional prejudice, have been ignored by 
the schools, # yet have anticipated results now being 
popularized by these societies, and indeed greater. 

From the standpoint of independent spiritual vision 
and psychometric perception and analysis, we proph- 
esy that when the work of formulating the new psychol- 
ogy is complete, the threefold nature of man and the 
corresponding planes of consciousness, relationship, and 
mental activity, normal and legitimate to him in the body, 
as outlined in these Lesson-Helps, and adhered to in 
all our books, will be fully verified and established. 

When the sphere of the psychic functions of the sixth 
sense, and especially the psychometric power, is fully 
understood, and full discrimination is made between the 
planes of psychic and spiritual experience, much of the 
mystery and strange experience involved in the history 
of mysticism will be readily accounted for. 

This practical knowledge of the threefold nature and 
cosmic relationship of man, and the key of discrimina- 
tion it puts into our hands, is necessary, to emancipate the 
world from the blinding influence of traditional miscon- 



APPENDIX. 117 

ceptions and false teaching, which for centuries has mis- 
directed the thought and effort of minds seeking light and 
truth. 

No better summary can be given of the fundamental 
conceptions (or misconceptions) upon which the theologi- 
cal superstructure of Christendom was reared, than that 
given in the sketch we have quoted from high Catholic 
authority of the early fathers : "To love Christ, to 
trample on the flesh, to resist the devil, to quench bad 
thoughts, to pass through life, and to get to heaven [in 
another world] — such is the summary of their theology." 

The entire thought and teaching of the Christian 
Church from the second century to our own time, in all 
its branches — Catholic, Greek, and Protestant — has been 
biased and permeated by these ideals of the early fathers, 
save in the minds of a very small and comparatively un- 
influential minority. To deny the verity of these doc- 
trines in some of the centuries was to evoke the tortures 
of the inquisition or martyrdom at the stake, under Prot- 
estant as well as Catholic regime. 

" S. Anthony," says our author, " the patriarch of soli- 
taires, the keen discerner of spirits, was the mighty ex- 
ample, after whose pattern the greatest men of the 
Church have modeled their lives ;" and the same authori- 
ty assures us that " Anthony groaned daily, considering 
the mansions in heaven, and setting his longing on them, 
and looking at the ephemeral life of man." And again : 
" He who lived in the sand, under the burning eye of the 
sun, amidst demons and wild beasts, thus for a hundred 
years, possessed his soul in patience." Here was the 
definite theme of the solitary meditations and contempla- 



118 APPENDIX. 

tions of Anthony, and the basis of his prayers. The man- 
sions of heaven in another world for which he longed, 
the ephemeral and transitory character of the life on 
earth which he despised, and which he regarded only as 
a probationary state in which to prepare for an eternity 
of blessednesss or misery (the probation ending at death), 
and the fitting of his sonl for heaven by resisting the devil 
in all the activities of the world and the flesh, which were 
looked upon as the special field of satanic deception and 
temptation, these were the ideals that shaped his life and 
directed his efforts. "His great toil in life was to fit 
himself for heaven." 

Possessed with this idea, it is no wonder that these 
" men of honest purpose, of deep thought, of generous 
impulses, shrank from the moral leprosy around them," 
and " fled from the contamination of the vast luxurious 
cities, into the boundless deserts to ' work out their salva- 
tion in fear and trembling.' The world might go on and 
have its fill of wickedness, but they tear themselves away 
to meditate on death, and on the judgment to come, and 
on the everlasting recompense." 

Is it not time for earnest souls to awake from this 
nightmare of superstition and go behind and above these 
semi-pagan fathers to the original gospel of the Son of 
God and Brother of men? He said but little of the 
world to come, and bade his followers take no anxious 
thought for the future, as the future would take thought 
for the things of itself ; " sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." The ideal he held up, for which men were to 
labor and to pray, was the realization of the kingdom of 
God in human life and society on earth. " Thy kingdom 



APPENDIX. 119 

come, Thy will be clone in earth as it is in heaven." 
He came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to 
bring them to fulfilment in the universal experience of 
life on earth. 

The prophetic picture that gladdened the anointed 
vision of the ancient seers was a redeemed and glorified 
humanity on earth : " For the earth shall be filled with 
the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters 
cover the sea ; " " And in this mountain shall the Lord 
of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a 
feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of 
wine on the lees well refined. He will destroy in this 
mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, 
and the vail that is spread over all nations [the " vail " 
of sense] . He will swallow up death in victory ; and 
the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces ; 
and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off 
all the earth : for the Lord hath spoken it ; " " The 
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; 
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose ; " 
" After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in 
their inward parts, and write it in their hearts ; and will 
be their God, and they shall be my people. And they 
shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every 
man his brother, saying, know the Lord : for they shall 
all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of 
them saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, 
and I will remember their sin no more." 

Here is the clearly defined picture of a perfected and 
sinless race on earth, foreseen and prophesied of old, to 
be brought in through the advent and ministry of him 



120 APPENDIX. 

that was to come, the mediator of the " New Covenant" 
relation between God and man, the Covenant of the 
Divine Fatherhood, sonship and brotherhood, ratified in 
universal experience. 

The mission of the Messiah " which is called Christ," 
as foretold in prophecy, and the angelic announcement at 
his advent, was not to save men from the results of sin, 
as a righteous retribution in the world to come, but to 
" save his people from their sin ; " save, or bring them 
to a sinless or perfect life here and now, a life from 
which no sin should flow. This would of necessity in- 
volve the perfect result in all future life, and the only 
possible provision or preparation for that perfection. 
This alone will fulfil the Old Testament prophecy of the 
Messianic work on earth, as well as the promise of the 
Christ to his followers. 

The apocalyptic vision of the beloved disciple on Pat- 
mos was this final realization of the Christ work on 
earth ; not the world's destruction, but its redemption and 
perfection : " And I John saw the Holy City, new Jeru- 
salem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared 
as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great 
voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of 
God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, 
and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain : for the former things have passed away." 

The Church ideal of salvation is certainly not the ideal 
held up to the world by the Christ and the prophets of 



APPENDIX. 121 

all time : yet in spite of the perverted understanding of 
the fathers, even with their false ideal of salvation, their 
very retirement from the world, and meditations upon 
the supreme realities of a spiritual existence, and the 
contemplation of God in Christ as a Divine sacrifice for 
man, opened their souls to some most remarkable ex- 
periences, both spiritual and psychic. The perverted 
psychic activities and distorted visions resulted from 
their false traditional notions and abnormal conditions. 
What, then, may not be done by a like devotion under the 
Christ ideal of the universal Fatherhood of God, and 
the corresponding spiritual nature and divine possibili- 
ties of man as the child of God, through the recognition 
of and loyalty to this nature and relation, when applied 
under normal conditions ? 

The doctrine of hell and devils that filled the thoughts 
of the monastic fathers, and of this world as given wholly 
over to satanic agencies for the temptation of man, as a 
probationer for eternity, his eternal destiny for weal or 
woe unalterably fixed at death, is a heathenish, libelous, 
and blasphemous caricature of the kingdom and govern- 
ment of the All-Father proclaimed by the Christ, whose 
infinite, changeless, and omnipresent love and providence 
embrace all the beings and the worlds of His creation. 

This world is God's world, and all things therein have 
the impress of His infinite skill and holy touch ; they are 
His handiwork and are perfect in the ends and uses for 
which they were made and to which they are ordained in 
the infinite wisdom and beneficence of His economy and 
government. Man has therefore but to recognize and 
put himself in accord with this divine order, to find God 



> 



122 APPENDIX. 

tabernacled in his own life, and the world itself trans- 
figured by the recognition and realization of his omni- 
presence. 

The deep convictions of the early fathers, of the stern 
and awful realties of the eternal world to which they 
were hastening, and the pictures of heaven and hell, both 
of which were made vivid to their minds by constant 
contemplation of them, stirred their souls to their pro- 
foundest depths. This it was which prompted to such 
self-denying devotion the work of personal salvation. 

The motives and the results were none the less power- 
ful for being based on error. It was the consecrated 
earnestness and fidelity to their convictions that secured 
the results that were reached, and which would have 
been unutterably grand and beautiful but for the abnor- 
mal conditions and perverted activities engendered by 
the bias of their misconceptions and false ideals. 

These men were familiar with the dreamy speculations 
of the Oriental world concerning a future existence, in- 
volving metempsychosis, reincarnation, karma, etc., 
with their uncertain and indefinite periods of changing 
states of existence ; hence, with their acceptance of the 
definite creed which at that time had thus been formu- 
lated in the minds of the Christians, they had that sense 
of certainty of the future life, with its fixed and unaltera- 
ble heaven and hell, which was sufficient to focalize 
them in that marvelous concentration of life-effort for 
personal salvation in another world. 

Says our Catholic author : " Superstition gives way to 
genuine belief, and the horrors of an uncertain future 
and the insecurity of the present disappear as religion 



APPENDIX. 123 

teaches man a certain creed with certain prospects, and 
secures to him a firm and healthy hope in future happi- 
ness." 

There is in this suggestion a deeply significant lesson 
for us. If we reject this monstrous and barbarous creed 
of the fathers, what shall we put in its place sufficiently 
impressive to stir us to a like noble and consecrated en- 
deavor ? Do we grasp the Christ doctrine of our divine 
sonship and transcendent possibilities, as incarnate spir- 
itual beings, with sufficient intensity of conviction to 
make its immediate realization in our own and universal 
experience the concentrated and supreme motive and 
effort of our life ? 

If, then, we accept this ideal, and its realization a 
possibility here and now, let us, as did the fathers, 
make our ideal the uppermost and constant theme of 
thought, meditation, prayer, and contemplation, until it 
becomes, as did theirs, the burning passion, motive, 
and inspiration of our souls. Then with the conscious 
love of the All-Father, and the ministry and companion- 
ship of angels to help, in the place of satanic phantoms, 
or " monsters upon the threshold," to fight us, we shall 
find ourselves without struggle, effort, or fighting, in the 
realization. 

In the love and providence of the Father, this is the 
truth of our being. We have only to aw T aken to its rea- 
lization. Making it the constant theme of our thought, 
meditation, prayer, and contemplation is but the process 
of awakening to its reality. 

Throw away at once and forever all thought of rewards 
and penalties in this world or any other, as a motive of 



124 APPENDIX. 

effort, and make the thought of education, not probation, 
the basis. Let the desire for truth and identification 
with the eternal realities of life for their own sake be the 
motive of action, and your own will come to you. 

The three planes of consciousness and corresponding 
specific mental action defined in these pages are normal 
and legitimate to man while in the body, and by the steps 
indicated may be brought to experience in all who will 
give the requisite time and attention for its realization. 

On the sense plane, man becomes individualized, and 
learns the value of his individuality in his active rela- 
tions to other individualities and things ; but while con- 
scious of this plane and sphere of relations only, in the 
struggle for existence and the maintenance of his indi- 
viduality, he necessarily becomes selfish and self-seek- 
ing. Seeing but the externals of men and things he 
is also easily deceived and misled by appearances. 

On the psychic plane, when fully opened to self -con- 
sciousness, he comes into direct communication with the 
inner life and soul of things, and when unbiased by 
sense standards, preconceived opinions, and self-inter- 
est, perceives the truth, or the actual states and relations 
of all things to which the attention is directed. 

On the spiritual plane he awakens to the realization of 
absolute being and supremacy, in oneness with God and 
the spirit of things in which all personal considerations 
and all external and partial standards of judgment dis- 
appear. The realization of truth and righteousness and 
identification therewith make normal and spontaneous 
the impersonal and impartial attitude of the soul toward 
all things and all relations on both the psychic and sense 



APPENDIX. 125 

planes. Hence the supreme importance of the soul's 
emancipation from the limitations of self and sense, 
through the opening of the spiritual consciousness ; not 
for its salvation in a future world, per se, but for its 
salvation to the integral, full-rounded, and perfect life in 
this world, as enjoined, promised, and exemplified by the 
Christ. 

Says Jacob Boehme : The soul which in this body has entered 
into the new birth and penetrated to God through the doors of the 
depth, has great wisdom and knowledge, even as regards the heavens ; 
for she has come from the womb of the virgin, wherein have been un- 
folded the eternal miracles of God, and the splendor of the Holy Trinity 
[the threefold Macrocosm] shines out of her. . . . Dear soul, 
if you desire the light of God, and also the light of this world ; if you 
desire to feed your body and to seek for the mysteries of God, do as 
God himself does. One of the eyes of your soul looks into eternity, 
the other one into nature. The latter goes on continually seeking in 
desiring and creating one mirror after another. Let that be so. It 
must be so, for God wills it. But the eye for eternity must not be 
turned (away from God) into desire ; but by means of that eye you 
should seek to turn the other one toward you, and not let it turn away 
from you, i.e., not let it turn away from the eye that turns into freedom. 
Put one will into that which you are doing, thinking that you are a 
servant in the vineyard of God ; that is, into the Eternal. Link your 
will every hour into humility before God ; then will your image 
walk in humility with your will in the majesty of God, and be illumined 
perpetually by the triumphant light of God. . . . 

If you rule merely externally (by external means) over all creatures, 
you are then with your will in an animal quality, and your rule is of an 
external kind, dealing only with forms. Your desire will then be car- 
ried into the animal essence, which will infect and capture you, 
and you will receive animal qualities. But if you leave that which 
merely relates to forms [look psychometrically]. you will become supe- 
rior to it, and able to rule over all creatures within the foundation 
wherefrom they have been created [from the Spiritual]. 

If you allow nothing [personalj to enter your desire, you will then be 



126 APPENDIX. 

free from all tilings and possess power over all. You have then 
nothing within your receptivity, and are as nothing to all things, and 
all things will be nothing to you, in the same sense as God rules over 
all things and sees them all ; but there is nothing that comprehends 
Him. . . . 

" Learn to know the guide from the inner world [intuition] and also 
the guide from the outer world [sense-perception], so that ye may know 
the magic school of both worlds. Then will your mind be free from 
delusions, for in delusion there is no perfection. The spirit must be 
capable of grasping the mystery. The Spirit of God must be the guide 
in man's desire Without that man will be merely in the external mys- 
tery, in the external heaven of the constellation, which also frequently 
kindles and drives the human soul ; but he has not the divine magic 
schooling, such as exists only in a simple and childlike mind. The ex- 
ternal guide works and shines merely in the mirror ; but the inner one 
lights up the essential being, and this it could not do unless guided by 
the Spirit of God. Therefore, he who knows the celestial school is with 
God, and will be a Magus, without doing much effort, if he is held by 
God and driven on by the Holy Spirit. . . 

He who hopes to perform something perfect and good, wherein he 
may rejoice eternally and enjoy it, let him come out of his egoism and 
self-will and enter into submission within the will of God. Even if the 
terrestrial desire for selfhood clings to him in his flesh and blood, if 
only the soul will is not infected by that desire for self, then will that 
self not be able to produce anything, for the w T ill of the soul, resting in 
submission to God, continually destroys the self-assertion. 

. . . Above all examine yourself for what purpose you desire to 
know the mysteries of God, and whether you are prepared to employ 
that which will be received for the glorification of God and the benefit 
of your neighbor. Are you ready to die entirely to your own selfish 
and earthly will, and do you earnestly desire to become one with 
the Spirit ? He who has no such high purposes, and merely seeks for 
knowledge for the gratification of self, or that he may be looked upon 
as something great by the world, is not fit to receive such knowl- 
edge. . . . Many of the saints that were driven on by the Spirit 
of God went afterward from that state of submission again into sel- 
fishness—namely, to their own reasoning and self-will. . . . No 
man can make himself a child of God, but he must throw himself 



APPENDIX. 127 

entirely into a state of complete obedience to God. Then will God 
make him His child. ... 

The living soul, from the eternal will of the Father, was breathed into 
man, and this will has no other purpose than to give birth to His only 
Son. Of this will God the Father infused into man, and this is the 
eternal soul of man. The soul ought to put her regenerated will into 
the eternal will of the Father, in the heart of God. Then will she re- 
ceive the power of the heart of God and also His holy eternal light, 
wherein arises the Paradise and the celestial kingdom and eternal 

joy- 

If the soul sinks her will into the meekness, i.e. , the obedience of God, 
she becomes a fountain of the heart of God, and receives divine power, 
and all her essences become angelic and joyful. Then her harsh es- 
sences will also be useful to her, and appear to her more mild and use- 
ful than if they h;id already originally been entirely sweet and 
mild. . . . 

The light and the power of the light is a desire, and wants to come in 
possession of the noble image made after God's likeness, because it has 
been created for the world of light. Likewise the dark world . . . 
desires the same, for man has all the worlds within himself, and there 
is a great battle taking place in man. That principle with which he 
identifies himself in his desire and his will will rule him. ... As 
the soul is essential, and her very substance is a desire, it is clear that 
she is in two kinds of Fiat. The first is her own soul-property ; the 
other belongs to the second principle, issuing from the will of God in 
the soul. The soul desiring God, for the purpose of forming herself in 
His image and likeness, this desire of God acts as a Fiat in her own 
centre ; for the desire of God wants to possess the soul. On the other 
hand, she herself desires to possess the centre in the power of the fire, 
wherein the life of the soul originates. 

The will of the soul is free, and she can either sink into nothing 
within herself and conceive of herself as the nothing [a derived and 
dependent being], when she will sprout like a branch out of the tree of 
divine life and eat of the love of God ; or she may in her own self-will 
rise up in the fire and desire to become a separate tree. . . . 

Spiritual regeneration does not depend on learning and scientific 
knowledge ; but there must be an intense and powerful earnest, a great 
hunger and thirst for the Spirit of Christ. Mere science is not faith ; 



128 APPENDIX. 

the latter is the intense hunger and thirst for that which I desire, so 
that it becomes formed into an image within me, and by grasping it in 
my imagination it becomes my own property. . . . 

By means of the introduction of the Divine will man becomes re- 
united to God and reborn in his emotional nature. He then begins to 
die relatively to the selfishness of the false desire and to be regenerated 
in new power. There is then still attracted to him the carnal quality, 
but in the spirit he walks with God, and thus there is born within the 
earthly man of flesh a new spiritual man with divine perceptions and 
with a divine will, killing day by day the lusts of the flesh, and by di- 
vine power rendering the world — i.e , the external life — heavenly and 
causing heaven — i.e., the inner spiritual world — to become visible in the 
external world, so that God becomes man and man God, until finally the 
tree reaches its perfection. . . . 

Spiritual knowledge cannot be communicated from one intellect to 
another, but must be sought for in the Spirit of God. Truly theosophi- 
cal writings will, even to the intellect, convey here and there a ray of 
recognition ; but if the reader is found worthy by God to have 
the divine light kindled within his own soul then will the inexpressi- 
ble words of God be heard by him. . . . 

As God is Lord over all, so man in the power of God was to be a lord 
over this world. The soul in the power of God penetrates through all 
things, and is powerful over all, as God himself, for she lives in the 
power of his heart. . . . The understanding is born of God. It is 
not the product of the schools in which human science is taught. I do 
not treat intellectual learning with contempt, and if I had obtained a 
more elaborate education, it would surely have been an advantage to me 
while my mind received the divine gift ; but it pleased God to turn the 
wisdom of this world into foolishness, and to give His strength to the 
weak, so that all may bow down before Him. . . . 

I might sometimes perhaps write more elegantly, and in a better 
style, but the fire burning within me is driving me on. My hand and 
my pen must then seek to follow the thoughts as well as they can. The 
inspiration comes like a shower of rain. That which I catch I have. If 
it were possible to grasp and describe all that I perceive, then would my 
writings be more explicit. ... I say it before God . . . that 
I in my human self do not know what I am to write ; but whenever I 
am writing the Spirit dictates to me what to write, and shows me all in 



APPENDIX. 129 

such a wonderful clearness, that I often do not know whether or not I 
am with my consciousness in this world. 

The more I seek the more I find, and I am continually penetrating 
deeper ; so that it often seems to me as if my sinful person were too 
low and too unworthy for the reception of knowledge of such high and 
exalted mysteries ; but in such moments the Spirit unfolds His banner 
and says to me, ' Behold ! in this shalt thou live eternally and be crowned 
therewith. Why art thou terrified ? ' . . . 

As long as God watches over me with His protecting hand, I under- 
stand that which I have written ; but whenever He becomes hidden be- 
fore me, I then no longer recognize my own work, and this proves tome 
the impossibility of penetrating into the mysteries of God unless by the 
aid of His Spirit. . . 

These writings transcend the horizon of intellectual reasoning, and 
their interior meaning cannot be grasped by speculation and argumen- 
tation, but it requires the mind to be in a Godlike state and illumined by 
the Spirit of Truth. . . . 

Thus now I have written, not from the instruction or knowledge re- 
ceived from men, not from the learning or reading of books; but I 
have written out of my own books which was opened in me, being the 
noble similitude of God, the book of the noble and precious image was 
bestowed upon me to read ; and therein I have studied as a child in 
the house of its mother, which beholdeth what the father doeth, and in 
his childlike play doth imitate the father ; I have no need of any other 
book. 

My book hath only three leaves [the three planes of consciousness] ; 
the same are the three principles of eternity, wherein I can find all 
whatsoever Moses and the prophets, Christ and His apostles, have taught 
and spoken ; I can find therein the foundation of the world and all 
mysteries ; yet not I, but the Spirit of God doth it, according to the 
measure, as He pleaseth. . . . For God bringeth not a new or 
strange spirit into us, but He openeth with His Spirit our spirit, namely, 
the mystery of God's wisdom, which lieth in every man according 
to measure, manner, and condition of his internal hidden constella- 
tion ; for Christ said, My Father worketh and I also work. Now, the 
Father worketh in the essence of the soul's property, and the Son in the 
essence of God's own image ; that is, in the divine similitude or har- 
mony. 



130 APPENDIX. 

Seeing, then, the Father's property or wisdom is unmeasurable and 
infinite, and that He being the wisdom itself , worketh, and yet through 
His wisdom all things do arise ; thereupon the souls of men are 
diversely constellated ; indeed, they arise and originally proceed out of 
one only essence, yet the operation is diverse and manifold, all accord- 
ing to God's wisdom. Now, the spirit of Christ openeth the property of 
every soul, so that each speaketh from its own property of the wonders 
in the wisdom of God. 

For the spirit of God maketh no new thing in man, or it infuseth no 
strange spirit into him ; but he speaketh of the wonders in the wisdom 
of God through man, and that not from the eternal constellation only, 
but likewise from the external constellation ; that is, through the spirit 
of the external world. He openeth in man the internal constellation of 
the soul, that he must prophesy and foretell what the external heaven 
worketh and produceth. . . . 

Now, if man (being God's image, in whom the divine speaking, ac- 
cording to the divine science, is manifest) will search the creatures — ani- 
mals, vegetables, or metals— he must then again obtain grace from God, 
that the divine light may shine in his science, whereby he may be able 
to go through the natural light, and then all things will be opened and 
.revealed to his understanding. For reason is nothing else but an hu- 
man constellation, which is a dark draught, or resemblance of all the 
principles ; it standeth only in an imaginary figure, and not in the 
divine science. 

But if the divine light be manifest, and shineth therein, then the 
divine word beginneth to speak therein out of the eternal knowledge ; 
and then reason is a true mansion or receptacle of divine knowledge 
and revelation; and even then it may be rightly and truly used, but 
being void of this, it is no more than an astrurn of the visible world. 

Man is the offspring of God, a spiritual being incar- 
nate or embodied in a physical organism. That part of 
his being which is pure spirit is necessarily of the es- 
sence and nature of the Father's Being, and partakes 
of the properties and attributes of the Father's Spirit. 
The divinest conception ever formulated to the en- 
lightened soul of man is the conception of God as 



APPENDIX. 131 

Wisdom, Goodness, and Power, Infinite, Eternal, Abso- 
lute. 

As the properties of Spirit are all-knowing, all-loving, 
all-producing, these properties inhere in the spiritual 
nature of man. 

Now, as the object of embodiment is the differentiation 
of the human spirit from the universal Spirit in an in- 
dividual personal identity, for the individualization of 
the self-conscious personality as a child of God, it is 
necessary that it should first awake to self-conscious- 
ness as an individual holding specific relations to other 
individualities, in a world made up of individual things 
and relations, under the limitations of a physical organ- 
ism and material conditions. 

While self-conscious only of sense-relations to a world 
external to man, all his perceptions and experiences 
partake of the limitations which these relations, under 
material conditions, involve, in which for the time he is 
unmindful of his original possessions as a spirit. Never- 
theless all these tend to intensify and establish his indi- 
vidual identity as an organic, self-conscious, indestruct- 
ible personality and child of God. 

All the knowledge he can attain through observation 
and experience under sense-relations is of value to him 
only as a sense-being, and for its individualizing influence 
on his personality and the faculties of his soul. They 
give nothing to him as a spiritual being. His highest 
possible attainment under sense-relations to the world 
count for nothing in the wisdom and treasures of the 
spirit. " The wisdom of man is foolishness with God." 

But when fully individualized and established in his 



132 APPENDIX. 

self-conscious personality in relation to other personali- 
ties and things, he is ready to be awakened to the self- 
consciousness of his spiritual nature, and enter into his 
original inheritance as a spiritual being and child of 
God. Through individualization in embodiment, he 
holds the sense of dependence upon, and thus the neces- 
sity of unity of will with the Father, that in his personal 
relations to that which is external to himself he may 
stand in the wisdom, goodness, and power of God, as 
His child. 

Standing consciously in the inherited (not acquired) 
possession of the wisdom, goodness, and power of God, 
the pomp and glamour of all earthly attainment and pos- 
session become the veriest tinsel and vanity. Neverthe- 
less, in the light of the higher wisdom, the world and all 
things therein, external and internal, are seen in their 
true light, and their divine significance fully understood 
and appreciated. This is divine illumination. 

It was the light of this illumination that Boehme shared 
to a high degree, and which made him what he was, a 
God-taught philosopher, and, as he called himself, a 
" Christian Theosopher," though he knew little from 
books, or the teaching of the schools. It was this in its 
perfection that made the unlettered carpenter of Naza- 
reth the perfect man and Christ of God. 

Before parting with the illuminated " Christian The- 
osopher," Boehme, let us quote a few of his words on the 
necessity of temperance and self-denial on the physical 
plane : 

The will if it goes straight forward, is faith, and as such it can give 
the body another shape, according to the external spirit ; for the inner 



APPENDIX. 133 

is tlie lord of the outer one ; the latter lias to obey the former, and the 
inner one can put the outer one into another figure. ... He who 
wants to become a master over himself and a celestial citizen must not 
be a great sleeper, nor fill his abdomen with an abundance of food or 
drink, whereupon the elements of the devil begin to qualify ; but he 
must be temperate, sober, and wakeful, like a warrior before the 
enemy, for the wrath is continually against him, and he has enough to 
do to defend himself without creating artificial obstacles. 

Overeating and intoxication cause sin, because the pure will which 
emanates from the fire principle becomes imprisoned and drowned in 
desire, so that it is rendered impotent in battle. . . . It is the 
greatest folly for man to crave for things which are not his own, and to 
introduce into his desire that which infects him with disease, and which 
ultimately drives away from God, excluding him in body and soul from 
his celestial state. . . . 

Let every Brahman with fixed attention consider all nature, both 
visible and invisible, as existing in the Divine Spirit ; for when he 
contemplates the boundless universe in the Divine Spirit he cannot 
give his heart to iniquity. . . . God lives also in man. Therefore, if 
we are but seeking and loving our own true self, we then love God. 
That which we do to each other we are doing to God. He who seeks 
and finds his brother and sister has sought and found God. "We are in 
Him all one body with many members, each of which has its own 
functions. . . . We are all one body in Christ, and have all the 
Spirit of Christ within our reach. If, then, we enter into the Christ, 
we may see and know everything by the power of His Spirit. . . . 

The Godless seek for God outside of his own self, and the Christless 
sectarians seek for a personal Christ in history ; but the man of God 
and the true Christian know God and Christ within their own soul. 
We surely believe in a personal and historical Christ, but only after 
Christ has become personal in a man will he realize the true nature and 
vocation of Jesus the son of Jehovah. ... If you wish to hear 
the Holy Ghost speak out of the mouth of another you must first enter 
yourself with your will into the spirit of holiness. 



134 APPENDIX. 



TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM LAW. 

From "The Spirit of Pkayer; ob, The Soul Eising 
Out of The Vanity of Time Into The Eiches of Eteb- 

NITY." 

A few strong words from this inspired mystic of a later 
date, and in a sense a disciple of Jacob Boehme, will, we 
believe, prove a stimulus and help to every earnest seeker 
and student of the higher life of illumination and power. 
First, treating on some matters preparatory to the 
Spirit of Prayer : 

The greatest part of mankind, nay, of Christians, may be said to be 
asleep ; and that particular way of life which takes up each man's 
mind, thoughts, and affections may very well be called his particular 
dream. This degree of vanity is equally visible in every form and 
order of life. The learned and ignorant, the rich and the poor, are all 
in the same state of slumber ; only passing away a short life in a differ- 
ent kind of dream. ... A life devoted to the interests and enjoy- 
ments of this world, spent and wasted in the slavery of earthly desires, 
may be truly called a dream. . . . 

Do but suppose a man to know himself ; that he comes into this 
world on no other errand but to rise out of the vanity of time into 
the riches of eternity ; do but suppose him to govern his inward 
thoughts and outward actions by this view of himself, and then to him 
every day has lost all its evil ; prosperity and adversity have no differ- 
ence, because he receives and nses them both in the same spirit ; life 
and death are equally welcome, because equally parts of his way to 
eternity [the realization of oneness with the Divine life]. For poor 
and miserable as this life is [the life of sense], we have all of ns free 
access to all that is great and good and happy, and carry within our- 
selves the key to all the treasures that heaven has to bestow upon us. 
We starve in the midst of plenty, groan under infirmities, with the rem- 
edy in our own hands ; live and die without knowing and feeling the 



APPENDIX. 135 

one only good, while we have it in our power to know and enjoy it in as 
great a reality as we know and feel the power of this world over us ;for 
heaven is as near to our souls as this earth is to our bodies, and we are 
created to have our conversation in it. God, the only good of all intelli- 
gent natures, is not an ab ent or distant God, but is more present in 
and io our souls than our own bodies ; and we are strangers to heaven 
and without God in the world for this only reason : because we are 
void of the Spirit of Prayer, which alone can and never fails to unite 
us with the one only good, and to open heaven and the kingdom of God 
within us. A root set in the finest soil in the best climate and blessed 
with all that sun and air can do for it, is not in so sure a way of its 
growth to perfection as every man may be whose spirit aspires after all 
that which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the sun 
meets not the springing bud that stretches toward him with half that 
certainty as God, the source of all good, communicates Himself to the 
soul that longs to partake of Him. 

We are all of us by birth the offspring of God, more nearly related to 
Him than we are to one another ; for " in Him we live and move and 
have our being. ' . . . 

God, considered in Himself, is as infinitely separate from all possibility 
of doing hurt or willing pain to any creature as He is from a possibility of 
suffering pain or hurt from the hand of man ; and this for the plain rea- 
son, because He is in Himself nothing else but the boundless abyss of all 
that is good and sweet and amiable, and therefore stands in the most con- 
trariety to everything that is not a blessing ; in an external impossibili- 
ty of willing and intending a moment's pain or hurt to any creature ; 
for from this unbounded source of goodness and perfection nothing but 
infinite streams of blessing are perpetually flowing forth upon all nature 
and creatures, in a more incessant plenty, than rays of light stream 
from the sun. And as the sun has but one nature, and can give forth 
nothing but the blessings of light, so the Holy God has but one nature 
and intent toward all the creation, which is, to pour forth the riches 
and sweetness of His Divine perfections upon everything that is capa- 
ble of them and according to its capacity to receive them. 

The goodness of God, breaking forth into a desire to communicate 
good, was the cause and beginning of the creation. Hence it follows, 
that to all eternity God can have no thought or intent toward the 
creature but to communicate good, and it is an eternal impossibility that 



136 APPENDIX. 

anything can ever come from God, as His will and purpose toward the 
creature but that same lore and goodness which created it. He must 
always will that to it which He wided at the creation of it. This is the 
amiable nature of God. He is the good, the unchangeable, overflowing 
fountain of good, that sends forth nothing but good to all eternity. He 
is the Love itself, the unmixed, immeasurable Love, doing nothing but 
from love, giving nothing but gifts of love to everything that He has 
made ; requiring nothing of all His creatures but the spirit and fruits 
of that love which brought them into being. Oh, how sweet is this 
contemplation of the height and depth of the riches of Divine Love ! 
With what attraction must it draw every thoughtful man to return love 
for love to this overflowing Fountain of boundless Goodness ! What 
charms has that religion which discovers to ns our existence in, rela- 
tion to, and dependence upon, this Ocean of Divine Love ! 

In Avhat follows reference is had to the working of that 
" spirit of prayer by which the soul rises out of the vanity 
of time into the riches of eternity," or awakes from its 
imprisonment in the life of sense and its limitations, 
under the law of selfism, to the realization of its spiritual 
nature and impersonal being as a child of God in the 
light, freedom, and supremacy of the spiritual life in and 
over the flesh : 

Now, as the flesh hath its life, its lustings, whence all sorts of evil are 
truly said to be inspired, quickened, and stirred up in us, so the Spirit, 
being a living principle within us, has its inspiration, its breathing, its 
moving, its quickening, from which alone the Divine Life can be born 
in ns. 

When this seed common to all men is not resisted, grieved, and 
quenched, but its inspirations and motions suffered to grow and increase 
in us, to unite with God, and get power over all the lusts of the flesh, 
then we are born again — the nature, spirit, and tempers of Jesus Christ 
are opened in our souls ; the kingdom of God has come and formed 
within us. On the other hand, when the flesh, or the natural man, 
hath resisted and quenched the Spirit or Seed of life within us, then 
the works of the flesh— adultery, fornication, murders* lying, hatred, 



APPENDIX. 137 

envy, wrath, pride, foolishness, worldly wisdom, carnal prudence, false 
religion, hypocritical holiness, and serpentine subtlety- — have set up 
their kingdom within us. . . . [These are all the result of the per- 
verted activities of sense life, which would be impossible if the functions 
of tlie outward man were under the control of the law of the spiritual 
life, which is the normal life of man as a child of God. These func- 
tions were ordained of God, and held to their true sphere of action 
work only good. The}' are as necessary to the highest perfection of life 
under the law of the Spirit as they are to the animal under the sense 
law of his life. The body and its senses are the organic instrument and 
channels of the sours activities in the performance of its work on earth, 
and all the fleshy functions in their normal action, are legitimate and 
necessary to this work ; but they can be held to their normal and un- 
perverted activities only by the subordination of the fleshy to the 
spiritual life. Hence the mortification of the flesh per se is a mistaken 
policy ; it will be perfectly regulated and controlled through the recog- 
nition of the power of the spiritual life and enthroning it in its rightful 
supremacy. The great Apostle has given the true method: " This I 
say then, Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the 
flesh." Now the " lusts of the flesh" are but its perverted activities, its 
normal functions being good and holy in themselves.] 

This holy Spark of the Divine Nature within man has a natural, 
strong, and almost infinite tendency, or reaching; after that eternal Light 
and Spirit of God, from whence it came forth. It came forth from 
God, it came out of God, it partaketh of the Divine Nature, and there- 
fore it is always in a state of tendency and return to God. . . . On the 
other hand, the Divine Spirit, as considered in itself and above, without 
the soul of man, has an infinite and unchangeable tendency of love and 
desire toward the soul of man. to unite and communicate its own 
riches and glories to it, just as the spirit of the air without man unites 
and communicates its riches and virtues to the spirit of the air that is 
within man. . . . The Gospel is the history [proclamation] of this 
love of God to man Inwardly he has a Seed of the Divine Life given 
into the birth of his soul, a Seed that has all the riches of eternity in it, 
and is always wanting to come to the birth in him, and be alive in 
God. . . . 

Consider the following similitude : A grain of wheat has the air and 
light of this world enclosed or incorporated in it : this is the mystery 



1 38 APPENDIX. 

of its life, this its power of growing. By this it has a strong continual 
tendency of uniting again with that ocean of light and air from whence 
it came forth, and so it helps to kindle its own vegetable life. 

On the other hand, that great oceau of light and air having its own 
offspring hidden in the heart of the grain, has a perpetual strong ten- 
dency to unite and communicate with it again. From this desire of 
union on both sides the vegetable arises and all the virtues and powers 
contained in it. 

But here let it be well observed, that this desire on both sides cannot 
have its effect till the husk and gross part of the grain falls into a state of 
dissolution and death; till this begins, the mystery of life hidden in it 
cannot come forth. The application may be here left to the reader. 

I shall only observe, that we may here see the true ground and abso- 
lute necessity of that dying to ourselves, and to the world, to which our 
blessed Lord so constantly calls his followers. An universal self-denial, 
a perpetual mortification of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, 
and the pride of life is not a thing imposed upon us by the mere will of 
God, is not required as a punishment, is not an invention of dull and 
monkish spirits, but has its ground in the nature of the thing, and is as 
absolutely necessary to make way for the new birth as the death of the 
husk and gross part of the grain is necessary to make way for its vege- 
table life. 

It is not the destruction or death of the old man or 
sensuous nature, per se, that the death of the gross part of 
the wheat grain suggests and symbolizes, but its transfor- 
mation. The coming forth of the new man is the very 
process of the transformation of the old into the new. 
Were the old man first destroyed there would be no ob- 
jective point in, through, and over which the new could be 
manifest. It is the germination and bursting forth of the 
life in the seed, to a new and larger organic evolution 
and expression in embodiment, which involves the death 
of the old by its transformation into the new. The very 
substance of this gross part of the kernel is necessary as 
a basis for the starting of the new, and is literally con- 



APPENDIX. 139 

verted into the incipient organism of the new. The 
rootlets reach down into the soil and the blade shoots up 
to the air and light above the ground. This is the process, 
not of a dying, but a living transformation of the seed, as 
the contents of an egg are transformed by the process of 
incubation into the chick within the shell. Death is but an 
appearance, a living transformation is the reality. Were 
the husk and gross portion of the wheat kernel destroyed, 
there could be no coming forth in organic evolution of 
the new and higher expression of the life hidden therein. 
So these bodies, and the powers and functions of the 
sense life, are not to be despised and outraged, but cher- 
ished, and transformed into the beautiful instruments of 
the spiritual life for which they were prepared and or- 
dained of God. This transformation will come, not by 
abusing the body, but by the cultivation arid coming 
forth in and through it of the spirit. 

This life of God in the soul, which, for its smallness [of manifesta- 
tion] at first and capacity for great growth, is by our Lord compared to 
a grain of mustard seed, may he, and too generally is, suppressed 
and kept under, either by worldly cares or pleasures, by vain learning, 
sensuality, or ambition. And all this while, whatever church or pro- 
fession any man is of, he is a mere natural man, unregenerate, unen- 
lightened by the Spirit of God, because this seed of heaven is choked 
and not suffered to grow up in him ; and therefore his religion is no 
more from heaven than his fine breeding; his cares have no more 
goodness in them than his pleasures ; his zeal for this or against that 
form of religion has only the nature of any other worldly contention 
in it. . . . 

On the other hand, whenever this Seed of heaven is suffered to take 
root, to get life and breath in the soul, whether it be in man or woman, 
young or old, there this new-born inward man is justly said to be in- 
spired, enlightened, and moved by the Spirit of God, and therefore all 
that is in him hath the nature, spirit, and tempers of heaven in it. As 



140 APPENDIX. 

this regenerate life grows up in any man. so there grows up a true and 
real knowledge of the whole mystery of Godliness in himself. . . . 
He hath then an miction from above which teacheth him all 
things. 

But thou wilt perhaps say, How shall I discover this Riches of eter- 
nity, this Light, and Spirit, and Wisdom, and Peace of God treasured up 
within me ? Thy first thought of repentance, or desire of turning to 
God, is thy first discovery of this Light and Spirit of God within thee ; 
it is the voice and language of the Word of God within thee, though 
thou knowest it not. It is the Bruises of thy serpent's head, thy dear 
Immanuel who is beginning to preach within thee, that same which he 
first preached in public, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand." When therefore but the smallest instinct or desire of thy 
heart calleth thee toward God and a newness of life, give it time and 
leave to speak, and take care thou refuse not Him that speaketh. 
For it is not an angel from heaven that speaketh to thee, but it is the 
eternal spealcingWord of God in thy heart, that Word which at first cre- 
ated thee, is thus beginning to create thee a second time unto righteous- 
ness, that a new man be formed again in thee in the image and likeness 
of God. But beware of taking this desire of repentance to be the effect 
of thy own natural s nse and reason, for in so doing thou losest thebey 
of all the heavenly treasures that is in thee, thou shnttest the door 
against God. turnest away from Him, and thy repentance (if thou hast 
any) will be only a vain, unprofitable work of thy own hands, that will 
do thee no more good than a ice'l without water. Bat if thou takest 
this unaicalcened desire of turning to God to be, as in truth it is, the 
coming of Christ in thy soul, the working, redeeming power of the Light 
and Spirit of the Christ within thee, if thou dost reverence and adhere 
to it. as such, this faith will save thee, will make thee who'e. 

Now, all depends upon thy right submission and obedience to this 
speaking of God in thy soul. Stop, therefore, all self-acting, listen not 
to the suggestions of thy own reason, run not on in thy own will ; but 
be retired, silent, passive, and humbly aMentire to this new risen light 
within thee. Open thy heart, thine eyes, and ears to all its impressions. 
Let it enlighten, teach, frighten, torment, judge, and condemn thee as 
itpleaseth ; turn not away from it, hear all it saith, seek for no relief 
out of it, consult not with flesh and blood, but with a heart full of faith 
and resignation to God ; pray only this prayer, that God's kingdom may 



APPENDIX. 141 

come and His will be done in tliy soul. Stand faithfully in this state 
of preparation, thus given up to the Spirit of God, and then the work 
of thy repentance will be wrought in God, and thou wilt soon find that 
He that is in thee is much greater than all that is against thee. [This 
is the essence of the Friends' Doctrine, their specific method of seeking 
regeneration and the guidance of the " inner light."] . . . 

The short is this : the kingdom of self is the fall of man, or the great 
apostacy from the life of God in the soul, and everyone, wherever he 
be, that liveth unto self is still under the fall and great apostacy from 
God. The Kingdom of Christ is the Spirit and Power of God dwell- 
ing and manifesting itself in the birth of a new inward man, and no 
one is in this kingdom but so far as a true birth of the Spirit is brought 
forth in him. These two kingdoms take in all mankind ; he that is not 
of one is certainly in the other ; dying to one is living to the other. 

Hence we may gather these following truths: First — Here is shown 
the true ground and reason of what was said above, namely, that when 
the call of God to repentance first ariseth in thy soul thou art to be 
retired, silent, passive, and humbly attentive to this new-risen Light 
within thee, by wholly stopping or disregarding the workings of thy 
own will, reason, and judgment. It is because all these are false coun- 
sellors, . . . they are all born and bred in the kingdom of self; 
and therefore if a new kingdom is to be set up in thee, if the operation 
of God is to have any effect in thee, all these natural powers of self are 
to be silenced and suppressed till they have learned obedience and 
subjection to the Spirit of God. Now, this is not requiring of thee to 
become a, fool, or to give up thy claim to sense and reason, but it is 
the shortest way to have thy sense and reason delivered from folly and 
thy whole rational nature strengthened, enlightened, and guided by that 
Light which is Wisdom itself. 

A child that obediently denies his own will and reason to be guided 
by the will and reason of a truly wise and understanding tutor, cannot 
be said to make himself a fool, and give up the benefit of his own ra- 
tional nature, but to have taken the shortest way to have his own will 
and reason made truly a blessing to him. 

But thou wilt perhaps say, if all self-love is to be renounced, then all 
love of our neighbor is renounced along with it, because the command- 
ment is only "to love our neighbor as ourselves." The answer here is 
easy, and yet no quarter given to self-love. There is but. one only love 



142 APPENDIX. 

in heaven, and yet the angels of God love one another in the same man- 
ner as they love themselves. The matter is thus : the one supreme, 
unchangeable rule of love, which is a law of all intelligent beings of all 
worlds, and will be a law to all eternity, is this, viz., that God alone is 
to be loved for Himself, and all other beings only in Him and for Him. 
Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love, is so far 
fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to this eter- 
nal Law of Love, an apostate from God, and incapable of the kingdom 
of heaven. . . . Bat what is loving any creature only in and for 
God ? It is when we love it only as it is God's work, image, and delight ; 
when we love it merely as it is God's and belongs to Him ; this is loving 
it in God. This is the one love that is, and must be the spirit of all 
creatures that live united to God. 

But to return and further show how the soul that feels the call of 
God to repentance is to behave under it, that this stirring of the Divine 
Power in the soul may have its full elfect, and bring forth the birth of 
the new man in Chrisb Jesus. We are to consider it (as in truth it is) 
as the Seed of the Divine Nature within us, that can only grow by its 
own strength and union with God. It is the Divine Life, and therefore 
can grow from nothing but Divine Power. . . . Now, this truth is 
easily consented to, and a man thinks he believes it because he con- 
sents to it, or rather does not deny it. But this is not enough ; it is to 
be apprehended in a deep, full, and practical assurance in such a man- 
ner as a man knows and believes that he did not create the stars, or 
cause life to rise up in himself. And then it is a belief that puts the 
soul into a right state, that makes room for the operation of God upon it. 
The light then enters with full power into the soul, and His Holy Spirit 
moves and directs all that is done in it, and so man lives again in God 
as a new creature. For this truth, thus firmly believed, will have these 
two most excellent effects : 

First — It will keep the soul fixed and continually turned toward 
God, in faith, prayer, desire, confidence, and resignation to Him, for all 
that it wants to have done in it and to it ; which will be a continual 
source of all divine virtues and graces. The soul thus turned to God 
must be always receiving from Him. It stands at the true door of all 
divine communications, and the Light of God as freely enters into it as 
the light of the sun enters into the air. 

Second. — It will fix and ground the soul in a true and lasting self- 



APPENDIX. 143 

denial. For "by thus knowing and owning our own nothingness and in- 
ability that we have no other capacity for good but that of receiving- it 
from God alone, self is wholly denied, its kingdom is destroyed, no 
room is left for spiritual pride and self-esteem ; we are saved from a 
Pharisaical holiness, from wrong opinions of our own works and good 
deeds, and from a multitude of errors, the most dangerous to our souls, 
all which arise from the something that we take ourselves to be either 
in nature or grace. But when we once apprehend but in some good 
degree the All of God and the nothingness of ourselves, we have got a 
Truth whose usefulness and benefit no words can express. It brings a 
kind of infallibility into the soul in which it dwells ; all that is vain, 
and false, and deceitful is forced to vanish and fly before it. When 
our religion is founded on this Rock, it has the firmness of a rock and its 
height reaches unto heaven. The world, the flesh, and the devil can 
do no hurt to it ; all enemies are known, and all disarmed by this great 
Truth dwelling in our souls. It is the knowledge of the All of God 
that makes Cherubims and Seraphims to be the flames of Divine Love. 
For where this All of God is truly known and felt in any creature, there 
its whole breath and spirit is a fire of love ; nothing but a pure, disin- 
terested love can rise up in it, or come from it — a love that begins 
and ends in God — and where this love is born in any creature, there a 
seraphic life is born along with it ; for this pure love introduces into the 
All of God — all that is in God is opened in the creature ; it is united 
with God, and hath the life of God manifest in it. 

There ia but one salvation for all mankind, and that is [the realiza- 
tion of] the Life of God in the soul. God has but one design or intent 
toward all mankind, and that is to introduce or generate His own Life, 
Light, and Spirit in them, that all may be so many images, temples, and 
habitations of Himself. This is God's will to all Christians, Jews, and 
Heathens. They are all equally the desire of His heart ; His light con- 
tinually waits for an entrance into all of them; His "wisdom crieth, 
she putteth forth her voice," not here, or there, but everywhere, in all 
the streets of all the parts of the world. 

- Now, there is but one possible way for man to attain this salvation or 
Life of God in the soul. There is not one for the Jew, another for a 
Christian, and a third for the Heathen. No ; God is one, human nat- 
ure is one, salvation is one, and the Way to it is one ; and that is the de- 
sire of the soul turned to God, When this desire is alive and breaks 



144 APPENDIX. 

forth in any creature under heaven, then the lost sheep is found, and the 
Shepherd hath it upon His shoulders. Through this desire the poor prodi- 
gal son leaveth Lis husks and swine and hasteth to his Father ; it is he- 
cause of this desire that the Father seeth the son while yet afar off, that 
he runs out to meet him, falleth on his neck, and kisseth him. See here 
how plainly we are taught that no sooner is this desire arisen and in mo- 
tion toward God, hut the operation of God's Spirit answers to it, cherishes 
and welcomes its first beginnings, signified by the Father's seeing, and 
having compassion on His son while yet afar off— that is, in the first 
beginnings of his desire. Thus does this desire do all : it brings the 
soul to God, and God into the soul ; it unites with God, it co-operates 
with God, and is one life with God. Suppose this desire not to be alive, 
not in motion either in a Jew or a Christian, and then all the sacrifices, 
the service, the worship, either of the Law or the Gospel, are but dead 
works that bring no life into the soul, nor beget any union between God 
and it. Suppose this desire to be awakened and fixed upon God, 
though in souls that never heard either of the Law or the Gospel, and 
then the Divine Life or operation of God enters into them, and the 
new birth in Christ is formed in those that never heard of His name. 
And these are they " that shall come from the east, and from the west, 
and sit down with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom of God." 

O my God, just and good, how great is Thy love and mercy to man- 
kind, that heaven is everywhere open and Christ thus the common 
Saviour to all that turn the desire of their hearts to Thee ! 

sweet Power of the Bruiser of the serpent, born in every son of 
man, that stirs and works in every man and gives every man a power 
and desire to find his happiness in God ! O holy Christ, heavenly 
"Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," that re- 
deemeth every soul that followeth thy light, which is always icitMn 
him. O Holy Being, immense Ocean of Divine Love, in which all man- 
kind live, and move, and have their being ! None are separated from 
Thee, none live out of Thy love, but all are embraced in the arms of 
Thy mercy, all are partakers of Thy Divine Life, the operation of 
Thy Holy Spirit, as soon as their heart is turned to. Thee ! O plain and 
eas} r and simple wa}' of salvation! wanting no subtleties of art or sci- 
ence, no borrowed learning, no refinements of reason, but all done by 
the simple, natural motion of every heart that truly longs after God. 
For no sooner is the finite desire of the creature in motion toward God 



APPENDIX. 145 

but the infinite desire of God is united with it, co-operates with. it. 
And in this united desire of God and the creature is the salvation of the 
soul brought forth. For the soul is shut out of God, and imprisoned in 
its own dark workings of flesh and blood, merely and^ solely because it 
desires to live to the vanity of this world. This desire is its darkness, 
its death, its imprisonment, and separation from God. 

When, therefore, the first spark of a desire after God arises in the 
soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into it ; it is 
nothing less than a touch of the divine Lodestone that is to draw thee 
out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity. Get up, therefore, 
and follow it as gladly as the wise men of tJie East followed the star 
from heaven that appeared to them. It will do for thee as the star did 
for them ; it will lead thee to the birth of the Christ in the dark centre 
of thine own soul. . . . 

But that thou mayest do all this the better, and be more firmly as- 
sured that this resignation to and dependence upon the working of 
Gods Spirit within thee is right and sound, I shall lay before thee two 
great and infallible and fundamental truths, which will be as a rock 
for thy faith to stand upon. 

First — That through all the whole of things nothing can do or be a 
real good to thy soul but the operation of God upon it. Second — 
That all the dispensations of God to mankind, from Adam to the preach- 
ing of the Gospel, were only for this one end — to fit, prepare, and dis- 
pose the soul for the operation of the Spirit of God upon it. These two 
great truths, well and deeply apprehended, put the soul in its right 
state, in a continual source of light, in thy mind. 

They will keep thee safe from all errors, and false zeal in things, and 
forms of religion — from a sectarian spirit, from bigotry and supersti- 
tion ; they will teach thee the true difference between the means and 
the end of religion, and the regard thou showest the shell will be only 
so far as the kernel is to be found in it. 

All the sacrifices and institutions of the ancient patriarchs, the Law 
of Moses with all its types and rites and ceremonies, had this only end : 
they were the methods of Divine Wisdom for a time, to keep the hearts 
of men from the wanderings of idolatry, in a state of holy expectation 
upon God ; they were to keep the first Seed of life in a state of growth, 
and make way for the further operation of God upon the soul ; or, as 
the Apostle speaks, to be a schoolmaster leading us to Christ. 



146 APPENDIX. 

Man had broke of from liis true centre, his proper place in God. and 
therefore the Life and operation of God was no more in him. He was 
fallen from a life in God into a life of self, into an animal life of self- 
love, self-esteem, and self-seeking in the poor, perishing enjoyments of 
this world. . . . All sin, death, damnation, and hell is nothing else 
Imt this kingdom of self, or the various operations of self-love and self- 
seeking which separate the soul from God. . . 

On the other hand, all that is grace, redemption, salmtion, sanctif ca- 
tion, spiritual life, and the new birtli, is nothing else but so much of the 
Life and operation of God found again in the soul. It is man come 
back again into his centre or place in God, from whence he had broke 
off. . . . 

This Pearl of eternity is the Church, or temple of God, icitliin thee, 
the consecrated place of divine worship, where alone thou canst worship 
God " in spirit and in truth." In spirit, because thy spirit is that alone 
in thee which can unite and cleave unto God, and receive the workings 
of His Divine Spirit upon thee. In truth, because this adoration in 
spirit is that truth and reality of which all outward forms and rites, 
though instituted by God, are only the figure for a time ; but this wor- 
ship is eternal. Accustom thyself to the holy service of this inward 
temple ; in the midst of it is the Fountain of living water, of which thou 
mayest drink and live forever. There the mysteries of thy redemption 
are celebrated or. rather, opened in life and power. . . . When 
once thou art well grounded in this inward icorship thou wilt have 
learnt to live unto God above time and place ; for every day will be 
Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a priest, a 
church, and an altar along with thee. For when God has all that He 
should have of thy heart, when, renouncing the will, judgment, tem- 
pers, and inclinations of thy old man, thou art wholly given up to the 
obedience, to the Light, and Spirit of God within thee, to will only in 
His Will, to love only in His Love, to be wise only in His Wisdom ; 
then it is that everything thou dost is a song of praise, and the common 
business of thy life is a conforming to God's will on earth as angels do 
in heaven. 

I shall conclude this part with the words of the heavenly illuminated 
and blessed man, Jacob Boehme : " It is much to be lamented that we 
are so blindly led. and the truth withheld from us through imaginary 
conceptions ; for if the Divine Power in the inward ground of the soul 



APPENDIX. 147 

was manifest and working with its lustre in us, then is the whole Tri- 
une God present in the life and will of the soul, and the heaven wherein 
God dwelleth is opened in the soul in the place where the Father be- 
getteth His Son, and where the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father 
and the Son." 

We give but a fragment from the writings of these 
two great mystics and Illuminati of the Protestant 
branch of Christendom. Persecuted and exiled from the 
recognition and fellowship of the popular communion 
of their own time, yet walking with God in the light 
and power of the Spirit, their experience and testimony 
will live to enlighten, strengthen, and encourage gener- 
ations to come, when their persecutors are buried in 
oblivion. 

The revival of interest on every hand in the higher 
possibilities of man will lead to the rescue of many of 
these rich treasures of mystic experience and testimony 
from the obscurity to which ecclesiastic bigotry and in- 
tolerance had consigned them, and the opening of them 
to the awakening religious thought of our age will be of 
inestimable service. 

The experience and testimony of the early " Friends," 
the Quietists, and of other orders recognizing the inward 
light, and representing a high degree of spiritual awaken- 
ing, though receiving the ban and generally the persecu- 
tion of the Church of their day, furnish striking illustra- 
tions of the power which a living inspiration opens in 
the life of man. They point also to the time when, 
emancipated from the trammels of ecclesiastical author- 
ity and the limitations of traditional ideals, all shall 
" come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge 



148 APPENDIX. 

of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the meas- 
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 

The lives of many of these mystics of the various or- 
ders were attended with experiences of the most marvelous 
character, generally deemed miraculous, and so were 
regarded as exceptional. Blinded by the bias of tradi- 
tional misconception, it did not occur to many of them 
that occult power over material elements and conditions 
was the legitimate and necessary result of spiritual su- 
premacy in the personal life. Hence, this was not ex- 
pected only as an exceptional experience through a 
miraculous interposition, as a special favor of Divine 
Providence in special emergencies. 

The experience as well as the testimony of all these 
spiritually awakened and enlightened souls, however, 
combine to confirm the great fundamental truth of the 
Master's teaching, that the kingdom of God is not some- 
thing to be sought for as external, but an inward experi- 
ence. It must be found and realized through the con- 
scious union of the soul with God in the heights and 
depths of its own spiritual being, and this in many souls, 
before it can be embodied in the organized activities of 
men as the new and divine social order, in which the 
will of the All-Father shall be done on earth as it is in 
heaven. 

When George Fox went into Scotland preaching his 
doctrine of the inner light, he met with great ojKposition 
from the clergy, in which they drew up a number of 
curses to be read in the " steeple -houses," to which all 
the people were to say Amen. One of these was, " Cursed 
is he that saith ' Every man hath a light within him suf- 



APPENDIX. 149 

ficient to lead him to salvation,' and let all the people say 
Amen." Another was, " Cursed is he that saith ' Faith 
is without sin,' and let all the people say Amen." To 
these the great apostle of the " inner light " replied : 

Concerning the light, Christ saith, Believe in the light, that ye may 
become children of light ; and he thatbelieveth shall be saved ; he that 
believeth shall have everlasting life ; he that believeth passeth from 
death nnto life, and is grafted into Christ. ' And ye do well,' saith the 
Apostle, ' that ye take heed unto the light that shines in a dark place, 
until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts. So the light 
is sufficient to lead unto the day-star.' As concerning faith, it is the 
gift of God, and every gift of God is pure. The faith which Christ is 
the author of is precious, divine, and without sin. This is the faith 
which gives victory over sin and access to God ; in which faith they 
please God. But those are reprobates themselves concerning this faith, 
and are in their dead faith, who charge sin upon this faith under pain 
of a curse, which faith gives victory over their curse, and returns it 
into their own bowels. 

From an address to Friends we take the following : 

' Quench not the Spirit, nor despise prophesy ings,' when it moves ; 
neither hinder babes and sucklings from crying Hosanna ; for out of 
their mouths will God ordain strength. There were some in Christ's 
day that were against such, whom He reproved ; and there were some in 
Moses' day who would have stopped the prophets in the camp ; whom 
Moses reproved, and said by way of encouragement to them, ' Would 
God that all the Lord's people were prophets.' So I say now to you. 
Therefore ye that stop it in yourselves, do not quench it in others, nei- 
ther in babe nor suckling. . . . Let not the sons and daughters, 
nor the handmaids, be stopped in their prophesy ings, nor the young 
men in their visions, nor the old men in their dreams ; but let the Lord 
be glorified in and through all, who is over all, God blessed forever ! 
So everyone may improve their talents, everyone exercise their gifts, 
and everyone speak as the Spirit gives them utterance. . . . 
' For the manifestation of the Spirit is gi^en to everyone to profit 
withal.' 



150 APPENDIX. 

Being finally arrested at the instigation of the priests and brought 
before the council, he says of the event : When I had stood awhile, 
and they said nothing to me, I was moved by the Lord to say, Peace be 
amongst you. Wait in the fear of God, that ye may receive His wis- 
dom from above, by which all things were made and created ; that by 
it ye may all be ordered, and may order all things under your hands to 
God's glory. They asked me what was the occasion of my coming into 
that nation ? I told them I came to visit the seed of God, which had 
long lain in bondage under corruption ; that all in the nation who pro- 
fessed the Scriptures, the words of Christ, of the prophets and apostles, 
might come to the light, Spirit, and power which they were in who 
gave them forth ; that in and by the Spirit, they might understand the 
Scriptures, and know Christ and God aright, have fellowship with them 
and one with another. 

This little fragment from Fox gives a slight hint of his 
powerful character and teaching. The record of his re- 
markable life and labors and those of his compeers is 
accessible to all, and will repay a careful study. 

We will close this fragmentary glimpse into the teach- 
ing of the mystics with a few excerpts from Cornelius 
Agrippa and several Neo-Platonists of the earlier cen- 
turies. Agrippa was regarded by Thomas Yaughan, 
from whom we have quoted, as the prince of mystics and 
adepts or true magi. Agrippa says, as quoted by Franz 
Hartman : 

Those who attempt to solve the problems of the divine secrets of 
nature by the reading of books will remain in the dark ; they are led 
away from the light of reason by the illusive glare of their erring intel- 
lect ; they are misguided by the tricks of external astral influences and 
by erroneous imaginations. They fall continually into error by seeking 
beyond their ownselves that which exists within themselves. 

You must know that the great cause of all magic effects is not exter- 
nal to ourselves, but operating within ourselves, and this cause can pro- 
duce all that the magicians, astrologers, alchemists, or necromancers 



APPENDIX. 151 

ever produced. Witliirt ourselves is the power which produces all 
wonderful things. 

Magic science embraces a knowledge of the most sublime and exalted 
truths, the deepest mysteries in nature, the knowledge of the nature of 
matter and energy, of the attributes and qualities of all things. By 
uniting the powers of nature and combining the lower with its corre- 
sponding higher counterpart, the most surprising effects may be pro- 
duced. This science is therefore the highest and most perfect of all. 
Agrippa regards nature as being a trinity [a threefold Macrocosm], 
an elementary (corporeal), astral, and spiritual world, and the lower 
principles are intimately connected with the higher ones. 

The cause of all activity in the universe is the omnipresent principle 
of Life (being identified with Will), a function of the universal Spirit. 
This life-principle causes the ethereal Soul to act upon the gross element 
of Matter. 

The Spirit— the Primum mobile — is self- existent and in motion ; the 
body, or the element of matter, is, in its essence, without motion, and 
differs so much from the former that an intermediary substance is re- 
quired by which the Spirit can be united with the body. This inter- 
mediary spiritual substance is the soul, or the fifth essence (quinta es- 
sentia), because it is not included in the four states of matter which are 
called the four elements, but constitutes a fifth element, or a higher 
state of that matter which is perceptible to the physical senses. This 
soul of the world is of the same form as the world, because as the spirit 
in man acts upon all the members of his body by means of man's soul, 
likewise the universal Spirit, by means of the soul of the universe, per- 
vades and penetrates all parts of the latter. There is nothing in the 
world which does not contain a spark of this universal power ; but it is 
most active in those things or beings in whom the activity of soul is 
strongest. . . . 

God created man in His own image. The universe is the image of 
God, and man is the image of nature Man is, therefore, so to say, the 
image of the image ; or in other words, a Microeoxmos or little world. 
The world is a reasonable living and immortal being ; man is equally 
reasonable, but he is mortal, or at least divisible. Hermes Irismegistus 
says that the world is immortal, because no part of it is ever annihi- 
lated. Nothing is ever annihilated, and if "to die" means to be an- 
nihilated, then is " dying " a term without any reason for its existence, 



152 APPENDIX. 

because there is no death in nature. If we say that a man dies, we do 
not mean to imply that anything of that man perishes ; we only mean 
to say that his body and soul become separated from each other. . . . 
God is infinite and cannot be overpowered by anything, and likewise 
is man's spirit free and can neither be forced nor limited. In God is 
contained the whole world and everything existing therein, aud like- 
wise in the will of man is contained every part of his body. Man being 
thus stamped and sealed in the image of God as His counterpart neces- 
sarily clothed himself in a form representing the true image of nature. 
He is, therefore, called the second or little world ; he contains everything 
contained in the great world, and there is nothing contained in the lat- 
ter which is not also truly existing within the organism of man. . . . 
Man is, therefore, called by the Bible " the whole creation," and in his 
aspect as the Microcosm he contains not only all parts of the world, but 
also contains and comprehends the divinity itself. 

The natural soul is the Medium by which the Spirit becomes united 
with the flesh and the body, through which the latter lives and acts and 
exercises its functions. . . . This is the doctrine of all hermetic 
philosophers. Man consists of the higher, the intermediary, and the 
lower principles [spirit, soul, and body]. . . . That part which is 
called the rational soul, and which, being free, may choose between the 
higher and the lower, will, if it continually clings to the highest, be- 
come united with God and immortal in Him ; but if the intellectual 
principle clings to that which is evil, it will become ultimately evil and 
grow to be a malicious demon. . 

It is possible that if the thoughts of the wise are directed with great 
intensity upon God, the divine light illuminates the mind and radiates 
its rays through all parts of the dark and gross body, causing even the 
latter to become illuminated like a luminous star, and to change its at- 
traction to the earth, so that it may be raised up into the air, and thus 
it has happened that even the physical bodies of men have been carried 
away to some distant locality. . . . [We read of such an experience 
with Philip the Apostle, who, after baptizing the Eunuch of Ethiopia, was 
immediately transported in the power of the Spirit to another town. 
"And when they were come up out of the water the Spirit of the Lord 
caught away Philip, that the Eunuch saw him no more : and he went on 
his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus ; and passing 
through he preached in all the cities till he came to Csesarea."] 



APPENDIX. 153 

Man's power to think increases in proportion as this ethereal and ce- 
lestial power of light penetrates his mind, and strengthening his mental 
faculties, it may enable him to see and perceive that which he in- 
teriorly thinks, just as it* it were objective and external. Spirit being 
unity and independent of our ideas of space, and all men having there- 
fore essentially the same spirit, the souls of men existing at places 
widely distant from each other, may thus enter into communication and 
converse with each other exactly in the same manner as if they had 
met in their physical bodies. In this state man may perform a great 
many things in an exceedingly short period of time, so that it may seem 
to us as if he had required no time at all to perform it. . . . Such a 
man is able to comprehend and understand everything by the light of 
the universal power or guiding intelligence with which he is spontane- 
ously united. . . . 

The spirit may accomplish a great deal by the power of Faith. This 
power is a firm confidence or conviction, based upon the knowledge 
that one can and will accomplish his purpose. It is a strong, unwaver- 
ing attention which gives strength to the work, causing, so to say, an 
image in oar mind of the power which is necessary to accomplish the 
work, and of the work which is to be accomplished in, by, and through 
ourselves. We must, therefore, in all magic operations, apply a strong 
will, a vivid imagination, a confident hope, and a firm faith, all of 
which combined will assist in producing the desired result. . . 

There is an art, known only to few, by which the purified and faith- 
ful soul of man may be instructed and illuminated, so as to be raised 
at once from the darkness of ignorance to the light of wisdom and 
knowledge. There is also an art by which the knowledge gained by 
the impure and unfaithful may be taken away from their mind and 
memory and they thus be reduced to their former state of ignorance. 
. If the soul is perfectly purified and sanctified she becomes free 
in her movements, she sees and recognizes the divine light, and she in- 
structs herself, while she seems to be instructed by another. In that 
state she requires no other admonition except her own thought, which is 
the head and guide of the soul. She is then no more subject to terres- 
trial conditions of time, but lives in the eternal, and for her to desire a 
thing is to possess it already. 

C. Agrippa here adds the following instructions, copied from Boe- 
thius : " The guides on the road to perfection are Faith, Hope, and Char- 



154 APPENDIX. 

ity, and the means to attain tliis object are Purity, Temperance, Self- 
control, Chasity, Tranquillity of Mind, Contemplation, Adoration 
(Ecstasy), Aspiration, and Virtue. 

If the highest state of spiritual development is attained, the spirit, 
endowed with the highest spiritual activity of the soul, attracts the 
truth and perceives and knows at once the conditions, causes, and effects 
of all external and internal, natural and divine, things. It sees them 
within the external like in a mirror of eternity. By this process, Man, 
while he still remains in external nature, may know all that exists in 
the internal and external world, and see all things, not merely those 
which are, but also those which have been or which will exist in the 
future, and, moreover, by being united and identified with divine 
power, he obtains the power to change things by the power of his Word. 
Thus man, being within nature, may be above her and control her laws. 

Apularius says that the human soul may be put into a state of sleep, 
so that she will forget her terrestrial conditions, and turning her whole 
being toward her divine origin, she will become illuminated by the 
divine light, and not only be able to see the future and to prophesy 
it correctly, but also to receive certain spiritual powers. On such occa- 
sions the divine inspiration and illumination may be so great as even 
to communicate itself to other persons near, and to influence them in a 
similar manner. . . . 

This is nothing more nor less than the ecstatic or 
spiritual trance referred to in these Lesson-Helps and our 
other books, and which is all that this author describes ; 
but it is abnormal, inasmuch as the state is not correlated 
with the external consciousness, this being closed or put 
to sleep in the trance. What we want and may have is 
the same degree of illumination without the closing of 
external consciousness, but its co-ordination with the 
spiritual. 

Only those who are pure-minded and spiritual can possess true magic 
powers. Thought is the supreme power in man, and pure spiritual 
thought is the miracle worker within him. If the thought of man is 
bound to the flesh, deeply amalgamated with it, and occupied with ani- 



APPENDIX. 155 

ttial desires, it loses power over the divine element, and therefore among 
those who seek to exercise magical powers there are few who succeed. 

Porphyry says : " The Incorporeal governs the Corporeal, and is there- 
fore present everywhere, although not as space, but in power. The 
corporeal existence of things cannot hinder the incorporeal from being 
present to such things as it desires to enter into relation with. The 
soul has, therefore, the power to extend her activity to any locality she 
may desire. She is a power which has no limits, and each part of her, 
being independent of special conditions, can be present everywhere, 
provided she is pure and unadulterated with matter. Things do not 
act upon each other merely by the contact of their corporeal forms, but 
also at a distance, provided they have a soul, because the higher ele- 
ments of the soul are everywhere and cannot be enclosed in a body like 
an animal in a cage or a liquid in a bottle. The universal soul being 
essentially one and identical with the infinite Supreme Spirit, may by 
the infinite power of the latter discover and produce everything, and an 
individual soul may do the same thing if she is purified and free from 
the body." [By being free from the body Porphyry does not mean sepa- 
rated from it, but simply not in bondage to it.] 

He repudiates the theory that clairvoyance, prophecy, etc., were the 
results of the inspiration by external gods, but says that they are a 
function of the Divine Spirit within man, and that the exercise of this 
function becomes possible when the soul is put into that condition [at- 
titude] which is necessary to exercise it. The consciousness of man 
may be centred within or beyond the physical form ; and, according to 
conditions, a man may be, so to say, out of himself or within himself, or 
in a state in which he is neither wholly without nor within, but enjoys 
both states at once. . .. . 

It is said that Porphyry was several times during his prayers leviated 
into the air, even to the height of ten yards or more, and that on such 
occasions his body appeared to be surrounded by a golden light [The 
same thing was true of St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Theresa, and others in 
the Catholic orders ; both the leviation and halo occurred during the 
contemplative ecstasy of many of the Catholic saints.] 

The gods are everywhere, and he whose soul is filled with such a di- 
vine influence to the exclusion of lower influences is, for the time 
being, the god which that influence represents, possessing his attributes 
and ideas. The nature of the union of the soul with God cannot be in- 



156 APPENDIX. 

tellectnally conceived or expressed in -words ; who accomplishes it is 
identical with God, he is divinity itself, and there is no difference be- 
tween him and the latter. 

The union of the soul with God is at the same time the 
union of God with the soul ; a very different thing from 
the other state mentioned above, in which the soul is 
filled with the influence of a god, a being external to him- 
self, by which he becomes for the time being "the 
god which that influence represents, possessing his at- 
tributes and ideas." 

This latter is simply the psychometric blending of the 
subject with another individual soul, who, though above 
and greater, is yet external to the soul thus magnetically 
brought, for the time, under the dominating attributes 
and ideas of the controlling god or spirit, and thus made 
to personate and give expression to. 

This, too, is a very common experience of modern 
medium ship, the medium when the influence is withdrawn 
remaining practically unchanged, retaining nothing of the 
elevation temporarily experienced while in the abnormal 
condition. 

Union with God, on the other hand, is the realization 
of oneness of life and being with the very essence and 
nature of the Father in the infinite within ; the centre of 
our being opened as a well-spring in the love, wisdom, and 
power of the infinite Spirit and universal Being of " our 
Father in heaven," in whom " we live and move and have 
our being." This experimentally realized is not tem- 
porary experience, but the permanent opening and activity 
of our own inward life in its conscious blending with the 
source from which it springs — the supreme and universal 



APPENDIX. 157 

life of the Impersonal and Infinite Father — and thus the 
blending of the Universal Life and Consciousness with 
ours in its individual development and external activities. 

This is an inward experience of personal divine realiza- 
tion, not the taking on temporarily of the attributes and 
qualities of another being, external to us, with which Ave 
may be in temporary psychometric rapport, and thus 
for the time personating and giving expression to as if 
our own. 

It is the actual opening and enlargement of our own in- 
dividual and personal life, through conscious unity with 
God in the life, by which we become self-conscious of the 
spiritual nature, source, and impersonality of our interior 
and real being. It is the realization by the soul of its 
own attributes, qualities, and supremacy as spiritual being. 
It is the coming into its original and true possessions — 
the glory it had with the Father before the world was. 

In that supreme hour of the Christ experience, he 
said : " And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine 
own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the 
world was." 

This is the high privilege of spiritual realization await- 
ing all the earth-born children of God, the realization of 
their own God-nature as His children, and when realized 
the individual has no need of leaning upon anything or 
anyone that is external to himself, because he realizes 
the fulness of all being within himself. 

Within the depths and heights of his own interior and 
spiritual being, to which his self-consciousness is noAv 
open, he is one with God, and goes forth in his relations 
with that which is external to himself " in the power of 



158 APPENDIX. 

the Spirit," or, with the consciousness of his divine nat- 
ure and supremacy upon him, as an embodied spiritual 
being and son of God, the outward and inward planes 
of consciousness being co-ordinated in experience. 

This was the perfectly co-ordinated state of being 
which characterized the Christ, and which, he assured 
his followers, was possible to all who really believed and 
truly followed him. This was the living water which he 
said he would thus give unto men, of which, if they 
drank, they would never thirst. 

The inspiration and elevation experienced by commun- 
ion and psychometric sympathy with other souls higher 
and greater than our own is blessed, and may indeed 
prove a heavenly ministry and a degree of quickening 
to the advancement of our own growth and develop- 
ment, but the special elevation to which we were raised 
by the temporary contact and sympathetic union is 
gone when the contact is broken. " He that drinketh of 
this water shall thirst again," said the Christ ; " but he 
that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall 
never thirst : for the water that I shall give him, shall 
be in him a well of water, springing up unto everlasting 
life." 

Sympathetic union with whatever is external to our- 
selves is necessarily of a temporary character and must 
end, as it began, in the entire separation of the individ- 
ual states, if our own permanent individuality is to be 
maintained : for it is impossible to enter into vital and 
permanent union with that which is external to us with- 
out the total loss of individuality. But, on the other 
hand, the opening up and expansion of our own inward 



APPENDIX. 159 

life by conscious unity of will and spirit with God in the 
life, by which the outward man in its individuality and 
relations to environment is co-ordinated with the inward 
life in the realization of its impersonal union with the 
Divine and Universal, but enlarges and perfects the in- 
dividuality in all its external relations and activities. 

The gods [continues Porphyry] " are not called down to us by our 
prayers, but we rise up to them by our holy aspirations and efforts ; we 
are connected with them by the all embracing power of love." 

Jamblichus, a disciple of Porphyry [both Neo-PlatonistsJ, says: If the 
soul rises up to the gods, she becomes godlike, and able to know the aboce 
and the below ; she then obtains the power to heal diseases, to make 
useful inventions, to institute wise laws. Man has no intuitive power 
of his own ; his intuition is the result of the connection existing be- 
tween his soul and the Divine Spirit ; the stronger this union grows [in 
his consciousness], the greater will be his intuition or spiritual knowl- 
edge. Not all the perceptions of the soul are of a divine character ; 
there are also many images which are the products of the lower activi- 
ties of the soul in her mixture with material elements. Divine Nature, 
being the eternal fountain of Life, produces no deceptive images ; but 
if her activity is perverted, such deceptive images may appear. If the 
mind of man is illumined by the Divine Light, the ethereal vehicle of 
his soul becomes filled with light and shining, a.d. 333. 

" Proclus was born in Byzantium, a.d. 412, and died in Athens, a.d. 
485. He was a hermetic philosopher and mystic, having often pro- 
phetic visions and dreams. It is said that he had the spiritual power 
of producing rain by his 'prayer,' and of preventing earthquakes. He 
was very pious and self-denying, and on some occasions his head seemed 
to be surrounded by a glory of light." 

We must now close this interview with the great mys- 
tics of the past. Those we have consulted are represent- 
atives of their several classes, yet these, it must be re- 
membered, represent but a small number of the many 
orders that have lived, wrought, and left their impress 



160 APPENDIX. 

upon the world. What we have gleaned, however, from 
the testimony and experience of these earnest students of 
the interior and higher life, of the great principles in- 
volved, and which these serve to illustrate, we shall find 
of great suggestiveness and help in our own direct study 
and effort at personal realization. In closing we will call 
attention to the labors of a great mystic of our own time, 
but of a different class : one that may very properly be 
called a mathematical mystic, w r ho, in the study of the 
human consciousness and its evolution, has reduced its 
processes literally to geometrical forms, defining the 
orderly steps of its unfolding with mathematical pre- 
cision and demonstration. 

This mathematical genius finds the geometrical order 
manifest in the evolution of human consciousness and in- 
telligence perfectly symbolized and prefigured in a corre- 
sponding evolution of plant life, as expressed in the 
geometrical lines, angles, curves, and perfected forms of 
leaf, flower, and fruit. Hence he illustrates the succes- 
sive steps and stages involved in the actual evolution 
of consciousness in man, by beautiful diagrams of this 
geometrical symbolism found in the leaf, flower, and 
fruit of plants. 

By the positive laws of geometrical development gov- 
erning both the evolution of plant life and the self- 
consciousness of man, Mr. Betts, the author of " Geo- 
metrical Psychology " — the book to which we refer — 
has given us what seems to be a perfect mathematical de- 
monstration of the three distinct planes of consciousness 
legitimate and necessary to the full normal development of 
man in his relations to the cosmos. And, singularly 



APPENDIX. 161 

enough, he has given them the very names which we have 
given in our exposition of these same forms of conscious- 
ness, viz., Sense-consciousness, Soul- consciousness, and 
Spiritual- or Gocl-consciousness. 

This is one of ' the most valuable and important contri- 
butions to the scientific formulation of the New Psychol- 
ogy that has yet appeared ; because it has a mathematical 
basis. 

To appreciate the force and beauty of his representa- 
tion, the work itself, with its illustrative diagrams, must 
be read and studied. We shall quote only so much of 
his description of the steps and stages involved in the 
natural evolution of the personal consciousness on these 
several planes, as will present a fair picture of the same 
to our students, for the suggestive help it will furnish to 
the study and mastery of the subject of these Lesson- 
Helps. 



From "Butts' Geometrical Psychology " — "An Abstract of His 
Theories and Diagrams. By Louisa S. Cook." {Geo. Reciway, 
London.) 

Mr. Betts has spent more than twenty years in studying the evolution 
of Man. He contemplates Man not from the physical, hut from the meta- 
physical, point of view ; thus the evolution of Man is for him the evolu- 
tion of the human consciousness. He attempts to represent the succes- 
sive stages of this evolution by means of symbolical mathematical forms. 
These forms represent the course of development of human conscious- 
ness from the animal basis, the pure sense-consciousness, to the spiritu- 
al or divine consciousness. . . . Mr. Betts felt that consciousness is 
the only fact that we can study directly, since all other objects of knowl- 
edge must be perceived through consciousness. 

Mathematical form, he considers, is the first reflection and most pure 
image of our subjective activity. Then follows number, having a close 



1G2 APPENDIX. 

relation to linear conception. Hence, mathematical form with number 
supplies the fittest symbols for what Mr. Betts calls " The Science of 
Representation," the orderly representation by a system of symboliza- 
tion of the spiritual evolution of life, plane after plane. "Number," 
Philo said, " is the mediator between the corporeal and the incor- 
poreal." . . . 

SCHEME OF EVOLUTION. 

Mr. Betts' representative diagrams trace the path of the nomad 
through five planes or standing-grounds of human evolution. He com- 
mences from the animal basis, which he takes as the zero or starting- 
point of the human scale of progression, and proceeding upward, ends 
with that culmination of human possibilities when man becomes more 
than man, and his further evolution must be as a being on such a tran- 
scendent plane of existence that it might be called divine. 

All attempts to trace the cause of the evolution of life must begin 
at some point of the eternal circle. Mr. Betts has begun with the 
evolution of man, but the principles of evolution which he discovers 
through his studies apply equally to the evolutions of higher or lower 
forms of consciousness, and even to those planes of existence which we 
usually term inanimate. Only by studying ourselves, he believes, can 
we ever arrive at a true knowledge of the external. 

The starting-point of the human evolution is the animal sense-con- 
sciousness, which, though a positive plane of life for the lower animals, 
affords but a negative basis of consciousness for man. 

The first human standing ground is that of rational sense con- 
sciousness. Self gratification is the predominant motive on this 
ground. 

The second standing-ground is negative, the reaction from the first, 
which is positive. It is the ground of the lower morality. Will is de- 
veloped as distinguished from the mere impulsive volition of the first 
ground. Self-control is the predominant motive. The dimensions of 
the form are contracted to a point which is not now a mere point of pos- 
sibility as at first, but a focus of realized sensuous activity repressed. 
Commonly, however, this ground consists rather in the circumscription 
than suppression of sensuous activity (the total suppression of sensuous 
activity would be death), which is now no longer allowed exercise for its 
own sake, but as a means to an end. Thus the representation of forms 



APPENDIX. 163 

actually possible in life, instead of being a point, will be a circle, or 
rather a circumference, for it is not necessarily a true circle. 

The third standing-ground Mr. Betts calls the ground of spiritual 
activity, but it is rather psychical than truly spiritual, the spiritual 
evolution being that of the fifth ground. Work is the motive of this 
ground. The sensuous activities are now allowed free exercise again, 
but as servants, not as masters. The representative diagrams are in 
three dimensions, for the consciousness now has depth as well as sur- 
face extension. 

The fourth is again a negative standing-ground of life, the reaction 
from the third ground, as the second from the first. It is the sacrifice 
of the personal Will, from which sacrifice it is reborn as a spiritual 
Will, in union with the divine or universal Will. Mr. Betts professes 
himself unable to give any representation of life on this ground, since 
even the most advanced of ordinary humanity have scarcely entered 
upon it ; also being a negative and reactionary ground, it would be al- 
most unrepresentable by diagram. The motive of this ground is a 
yearning for union with the infinite. 

The fifth standing-ground is spiritual, the ground of intuitive knowl- 
edge. As the spiritual now becomes a positive plane of life it would be 
capable of representation if we were able to draw diagrams in four 
dimensions, but our present consciousness is limited to only three. 
Normal human beings have not yet attained to this plane of life, though 
the aspirations of a few tend thitherward ; consequently no definite 
conception can be formed of such a condition, except by inference from 
the analogies and correspondences of lower planes of life or through the 
revelation of higher beings who have already developed this grade of 
consciousness in themselves. It is the plane of the occult what we with 
our limited ideas of nature call the Supernatural. . . . 

" That Being must exist," Mr. Betts is obliged to postulate as the first 
law of evolution. Manifestation is to arise. . . . From the first 
law that Being shall exist, Mr. Betts deduces the corollary " Being ex- 
ists in variety." If Infinite Being is to be manifested in finite existence 
it must be through infinite variation of the finite, for otherwise the 
cosmos would be a manifestation of monotony, not of infinity. 



164 APPENDIX. 



PRINCIPLES OF REPRESENTATION. 

When we contemplate our consciousness— and in the fact that ice can 
contemplate consciousness as ours lies a proof of the quality of the self 
which will presently he brought to light in the diagrams — when we 
contemplate our consciousness we find there one element which differs 
from all the rest. Whereas they are multitudinous, chaotic, changing, 
it is one, alone, comparatively unchanged. It may he called the un- 
differentiated differentiation of the One, and all the other elements are 
related to this substance. We call it " I," the subject of consciousness. 
The relation of object to subject on the lowest plane is sense ; on a 
higher plane, intellectual faculty ; on the highest, knowledge. I see, I 
think of, I know that I see and think of . some object. . . . 

We feel as if our centre were fixed, and so far as its relation to its own 
activities are concerned it is fixed. 

The first sensation produced by the action of a determinating cause is 
simple consciousness, the feeling of being alive. To this succeed touch, 
sight, hearing, taste, and smell ; and on the hypothesis of the Septenary 
law of perfectness, there must still remain the possibility of two latent 
senses not yet determined. 

Every sensation alternates with a pause or blank of non-sensation, the 
ebb from the state of consciousness to the state of unconsciousness 
again. 

Every conditioning agent, whatever may be its plane of operation, in 
its ultimate analysis is resolvable into pulsation, vibration. For in- 
stance, vibrations within definite limits of velocity cause a determina- 
tion of consciousness as seusations of Light and Color, other vibrations 
having a slower rate, sensations of sound, and so for the other senses, in 
accordance with the law of determination. It is not inconceivable that 
beings might exist to whose internal activity the external vibrations we 
call Light and Sound might appear differently, so that the determinant 
that produces the sensation of sight in us might excite the sense of hear- 
ing in them ; thus sight would be indeed the " music of the spheres," 
or with a changed relation again, sound might be visible, as Coleridge 
pictures in his beautiful fragments of " Kubla Khan : " 



APPENDIX. 165 

" With music loud and long 
I would fain build that dome in air, 
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! 
And all who heard should see them there." 

Or there might he beings of ampler development yet who could ad • 
just any sense to any series of vibrations, tuning their instruments, so 
to speak, to the required pitch. 

[See account of the Bertolacci children in Appendix to " The Way, 
the Truth, and the Life," by the Author. These children, through the 
opening of the inner senses and their co-ordination with the outer, were 
enabled to change the focus of their eyes at will, so as " to see the most 
minute and the most distant objects with the naked eye, as though they 
were looking at them with a microscope or a telescope."] 

If the optic nerve could be related to some force akin to Electricity 
instead of Light, an immense expansion of the power of vision would 
accrue, for in Electricity a long line of action takes the place of a point 
of radiation. Distance would be practically annihilated, as we should 
be able to receive almost instantaneous optic telegrams of most distant 
scenes. Some adjustment of this nature may be the explanation of the 
phenomena of clairvoyance and other of those mysterious inner senses 
whose existence in no small number of persons it is hardly possible to 
doubt in face of the constantly increasing mass of evidence. 

[The fault with this suggestion is, that its author forgets that the 
inner senses referred to are related to an inner and vastly more subtile 
medium of vibratory transmission than that to which the nerves and 
physical organs of sense are related, and to which the grosser nerve- 
aura cannot be made to respond. That medium is the psychic ether, 
and in its instantaneous and far-reaching vibratory action it is. indeed, 
" akin to Electricity ; " and with these inner senses opened and adjusted 
to this elastic ether, we may "receive practically instantaneous tele- 
grams of most distant scenes." This was demonstrated by the experi- 
ence of the Bertolacci family, as well as by many others.] 

We know through their chemical effects that there are rays of light 
vibrating more rapidly than the violet rays, which cause us no answer- 
ing sensation of color. Possibly in the process of evolution, as our de- 
termining law enlarges, we may develop the consciousness of new and 
unknown colors beyond the violet and below the red rays. . . . 



166 APPENDIX. 

The action of the determining agent upon the eye is twofold. It 
causes the realization of a subjective sensation and of an objective per- 
ception. Thus far existence is but a vibratory line, a string of individ- 
ual isolated instants of consciousness. Such probably is the form of 
the consciousness of a young infant or of a total idiot— a one dimen- 
sional consciousness ; the warp of time is being spun, but not the woof 
woven with it. 

After the repeated recurrence of any sensation, though slightly vary- 
ing in form, the individual develops the consciousness of its identity 
and begins to form an image or idea, both of the subjective sensation 
and of the accompanying objective perception, which he can retain in 
his mind though the sense affection of which it is the counterpart is 
transitory. Mr. Betts calls this power of ideation Imagination, using 
it in the literal sense of the word. As a prism receives a beam of light 
and deflects the rays, holding them apart so that the colors of the spec- 
trum are separated and distinguished, so Imagination receives the stream 
of consciousness and holds apart and compares the different experi- 
ences. . . . Imagination, according to Mr. Betts, is a polar activ- 
ity. Besides its positive function of comparison, whereby ideas are held 
apart and distinguished, it has also the negative function of combining 
them into a unity, so that we feel the continuity of consciousness to be 
unknown. 

[Space will not allow of further quotation of Mr. Betts' interesting 
analysis of the nature of consciousness and memory, and the specific 
conditions of their development, etc., but we must hasten on to his 
special analysis and description of the five human standing grounds 
with their three positive planes of consciousness.] 

VAEIATION. 

In the examples of consciousness which have been given, the various 
undulations of real activity into which the original simple circuit of the 
ideal activity has been differentiated flow on in a complex rhythm of 
harmony. There is no impulse left undetermined, no want left un- 
satisfied, and thus no incentive to further progress, seeing that com- 
pleteness is already attained, though but of a low order. It is the dis- 
cord, the conflict of opposites — power struggling with condition and 
yearning seeking satisfaction — that impel men on toward the realization 



APPENDIX. 167 

of a higher plane of existence than consists in personal gratification 
and the enjoyment of externals. 

The original Alpha and Omega forms in their simple perfectness may 
be taken as the representation of Adam and Eve in the Earthly Para- 
dise — types which are approximately realized in the early youth of 
every man or every race born under favorable circumstances. The 
simple savage living amid bountiful Nature feels little or no dispropor- 
tion between his desires and their fruition. His wants are so few and 
simple that he can easily gratify them, and the means of gratifying 
them are at hand. It is true there must be from the first some lurking- 
dissatisfaction with every realization of the ideal, since no realization 
can exhaust the ideal ; and had it been otherwise there could have 
been no progress. But at first the dissatisfaction is so unrealized that it 
does not force itself upon the attention ; it lies latent in the conscious- 
ness. 

. . . But the perfect type must be broken through, the serpent 
of dissatisfaction must bring discord into Eden that ultimately a 
higher perfectness than ignorant innocence may be realized, that of 
purity [positive virtue], which, knowing good and evil, freely chooses 
good. 

Since Being must exist and can only be manifested in the finite 
through infinite variation, there must necessarily be in every man some 
disproportion between his alpha and omega activities, whether of per- 
ception or imagination. This disproportion at first leads a man on un- 
consciously, as he thinks to experience yet greater delights with each 
new fruition of desire. But as his desires expand, and their gratifica- 
tion is increasingly difficult, the disproportion becomes a conscious ele- 
ment in his existence ; a thrill of unsatisfaction accompanies every 
determination of activity, even the most pleasurable, impelling to the 
continuous search in new directions for new and more perfect means 
of self-gratification, only to be proved in their turn equally unsatisfy- 
ing. . ... 

Imperfect determination causes a hiatus to be felt, which acts as a de- 
terminant of consciousness into self-consciousness. The child or the 
simple savage is self-conscious in that his experiences have relationship 
to himself. The realization of imperfection causes a further develop- 
ment of self-consciousness in that he now contemplates his experiences 
as being his own. . . . 



168 APPENDIX. 

The limitation which prevents the higher possibilities from being 
fully realized produces ilie consciousness of sin and short coming, yet 
this very limitation is the foundation of the individuality and idosyn- 
crasy of character which on a higher plane render social union and cor- 
porate unity possible. But although the one contains the germs for 
future development, no true brotherhood is possible while the form re- 
mains enchained within the circle of self-gratification. It does but os- 
cillate iu unstable equilibrium between its conflicting desires. . . . 



NEGATIVE MORALITY AND ITS MATHEMATICAL EQUIVALENTS. 

The second plane or standing-ground of human life being a nega- 
tive one, a reaction from the first ground of egotism may be passed 
over briefly, as it is scarcely at all capable of representation by dia- 
gram. 

The increased strife of conflicting desires, as the counterpart forms 
expand and their law of development becomes ever more complex and 
contradictory, causes the consciousness to become more and more self- 
conscious until the ego is forced to pause in the pursuit of pleasure and 
contemplates existence itself. 

Just as after repeated occurrence of sensations the child or savage be- 
gins to identify them and compare them one with another, so now, after 
a more or less prolonged experience of life on the first standing-ground, 
the man begins to reflect on his life as a whole and to distinguish its 
characteristics, except in the case of those persons who remain all their 
life enchained on the sensuous plane. He compares the reality of his 
actual life with his ideal, that dim feeling of absolute life that underlies 
his consciousness and which is his from the fact that the circuit of his 
life-energy is contained in the great Alpha, the movement of Universal 
Spirit. His perception awakes to the fact of the delusions and ephem- 
eral character of the life spent in the pursuit of pleasure. He sees 
that to satisfy his desire of life through the senses is an insoluble in- 
finite problem. The more his thirst of life grows the satisfying waters 
flow backward from his lips. A revulsion of feeling sets in, and he 
withdraws his desires from their wonted channels. 

At this crisis some, in disgust of life, have committed suicide ; others 
have reduced life to the extremest negation possible short of death. 
But more commonly the evolution of this ground consists in the circum- 



APPENDIX. 169 

scription rather than the annihilation of the former activity. The ego, 
a mere point at first, becomes a focus ; its realized activities, concentred 
and repressed, are allowed to act only within the circumscribing circle. 
In the "I will not" of renunciation and self control morality begins 
and the existence first becomes a persistent and independent thing and 
takes satisfaction in the consciousness of life as life. The mere impulses 
of volition of the first standing-ground can scarcely be called Will at all, 
and no morality is possible except as obedience to external law, and no 
religion is possible except through external revelation, the affirmation 
of those egoes who have attained a higher stage of progress. 

The degree in which the second ground of life is manifested varies 
very widely in different persons. Some never get beyond the barren 
negative morality of this ground — "the eternal nay," Carlyle calls it. 
Life never becomes anything to them but the giving up of pleasure ; 
they never reach "the eternal yea," but instead of passing through 
death to life, wrap the grave-clothes about them, and remain in the 
tomb. Others, on the contrary, pass so easily and quickly from an ideal 
of pleasure to one of duty, and find such happiness in duty, that the 
renunciation of the lower pleasures is hardly felt at all. . . . Self- 
conquest becomes easier every time the foe is vanquished. 

In the latter stage of evolution of the first ground the form was de- 
veloped from conflicting scales of progression ; owing to this some ten- 
dencies will be found to be strong out of due proportion to the rest, and 
will consequently require a greater exercise of Will to control them ; so 
the form of consciousness on the second plane will not be wholly with- 
out personal character. . . . 

The motive of life on the second plane is but a kind of inverted ego- 
tism. The ego faces itself and admires itself, save only when it dis- 
obeys the ascetic law it has imposed upon itself for its own satisfaction. 
Though self-control lays the foundation of true morality, alone it is but 
a barren and negative condition, a consciousness of immense powers, 
with but little result, other than the repressing of the ego's own im- 
pulses ; consequently it is the negation of life that can only last till the 
internal, ever increasing through repression, bursts its self-imposed 
bonds and, surging upward, lands the ego on the shores of the higher 
morality. 



170 APPENDIX. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE HICtHEK MORALITY : PHILANTHROPY 
OR ALTRUISM — ITS PRINCIPLES. 

The deatli-in-life of the second standing-ground cannot last. It is 
but the stage of transition from a lower to a higher one, to which sooner 
or later there must be an uprising ; for the second ground contains 
within itself a principle of progress. 

The energy of the ego, circumscribed by Will and held in check from 
its free exercise on the sensuous plane, gains strength by reason of the 
limitation of its activity, until at length it finds a new outlet for its 
impulses and leaps upward, rejoicing in a new ideal of life. 

As the first ideal was having the passion of personal possession, and 
the second not having the first imperfect impulse of sacrifice, now the 
third becomes doing ; and not pleasure, but duty, not self -gratification, 
but work, is made the aim of life. And virtue is no longer the con- 
forming to an external, but obedience to an internal law. ... 

The circuit of the new activity (every activity is polar) depends upon 
a point above the form which is conceived of as an absolute and infinite 
non-ego, for not yet does perception awake to the oneness of the soul, 
the higher ego with the infinite. The first life-centre represents the 
personal ego, the self that separates from the All. The second life- 
centre represents the divine ego, the true individuality that unites 
with the All. A new determining law comes into operation to which 
the personal ego voluntarily subordinates his activity, regarding this law 
of internal determination as the expression of the Divine Will. In 
some minds it may rather take the form of a vocation to which the life 
is voluntarily dedicated, or any other form under which the principle 
of duty and right may be conceived of. 

As the desire of the ego required a non-ego, an object as the condi- 
tion of its fruition on the lower ground, so the desire of the higher life 
requires a non-ego for its fulfilment. The determinant in this case is 
not objects, but other egoes. Mankind supplies the necessary comple- 
ment through which the ideal activity of the ego can be manifested. 
For the personal aspirations to be realized it must carry others up along 
with it. Through the needs of humanity the ideal activity of the soul 
is embodied in a definite form of duty and use. Forms of religion, 



APPENDIX. 171 

forms of government, ideal arts, benefit institutions, sciences, all the 
busy work of the world that is not wholly connected with objects of 
sense, are the product of this activity. 

The ego as it enters this state of life begins to realize that — 

"To dignify the day with deeds of good 
And constellate the eve with noble thoughts, 
This is to live, and let our lives narrate, 
In a new version solemn and sublime, 
The grand old legend of humanity." 



THE POLAK OPPOSITE FOEMS OP THE THIKD GEOUND. 

. The faculties of sense, the rational attributes of the ego, 
are no longer compared among themselves, but are all subordinated to 
the central idea, and are allowed free exercise as the servants or instru- 
ments of the higher life. 

This higher life is progressively realized by means of appropriate 
determinations. The first blind impluse to do good soon becomes 
rationalized in a greater or less measure, probably according pretty 
closely with a scale of rationality the ego had developed on the lower 
ground. The antithesis of the alpha and omega forms becomes ap- 
parent. 

Once more there is no undeterminateness manifested in the form. 
For a time the ego feels as if in the gladness of the performance of duty 
its ideal was being realized. 

Frequently not all the life energy of the form is conditioned by the 
determinants of duty. In such a case the remaining activity falls back 
upon the method of the lower ground and is determined by the law of 
pleasure, for since the impulses are inherent impulses they are re- 
garded as the expression of the Divine will, and are allowed free exer- 
cise in subordination to the new law, and not held in check as on the 
former standing-ground. The essential life of the form is determined 
in three dimensions by the law of duty ; the superabundant energy is 
determined in two dimensions by the law of pleasure, and extends it- 
self outwardly, forming a kind of foliation, a fringe of personal en- 
joyment, about the true life; . . . and since other egoes are 
the usual determinants on this ground, this efflorescence may be taken 



172 APPENDIX. 

as representing an inclination toward social pleasures and recrea- 
tions. . . 

Just as the impulse of the lower life was progressively realized as the 
fruition of personal desire in determined forms of intellect and emotion, 
so now the impulse of the higher life "begins to he realized in the alpha 
and omega forms as the satisfaction of impersonal desire or Love. 
Duty becomes the objective form, and Conscience the emotion of duty, 
the subjective form of the consciousness. The external and internal activ- 
ity of the ego is determined by the altruistic law of determination to 
virtuous thought and action. In what measure the activity is tbus de- 
termined, in that same measure the thought and action react upon the 
ego as Conscience, the faculty of judgment, sifting, examining, and dis- 
cerning the motives of conduct and relating the action and thought to 
the ego in the progressive qualification of consciousness. 



VARIATION OF THE THIRD STANDING-GROUND. 

In the first dawn of the new life and the gladness that accompanies 
the first exercise of the powers of soul, the ego does not perceive any 
disproportion between its ideal and the possibility of realizing it It con- 
templates the needs of humanity, which are its determinants ; the non- 
ego, through which its ideal of duty is realized ; but it is not saddened 
at the sight of sorrow, and suffering, and ignorance, and want, for they 
afford a field for the exercise of its powers ; it believes that it shall be 
happy itself and shall make others happy. 

If the consciousness is but low in the scale, the determinants are prob- 
ably the personal needs of those immediately surrounding it. Perhaps 
it is in the faithful performance of family duties that the ego feels its 
ideal shall be realized. In a consciousness of a higher order the desire 
might take the form of becoming a local benefactor. Thence it might 
expand to patriotism and humanitarian schemes for the good of the na- 
tion. In the highest natures the aim would be universal philanthropy, 
the training and benefiting mankind generally. 

The dotted line of activity ascending from the central point, the per- 
sonal ego, may be regarded as the line of faith and aspiration, the im- 
pulse of the higher life which yields itself up to be determined by the 
law which it feels to be divine. As the activity spreads outward and 
becomes determined through other egoes a sphere is afforded for the real- 



append rx. 173 

ization of these impulses. But after a time a disproportion begins to 
manifest Hself between the actual possibilities of the ego which is ab- 
solutely limited at any particular moment of time and the perfectness 
of its determining law. If the personal limits be considered as 1, the 
demand upon it would be 1+ if duty is to be performed as perfectly 
as conceived of. Consequently it never can perfectly do the 

thing it would. Some compromise has to be effected between the two. 
. . . The best actions are seen to fall short of the standard. An 
incurable sorrow, a sense of sin and failure, accompanies every mani- 
festation of activity. Thus suffering, the great Educator again takes 
its place as a factor in the evolution. The disposition between the 
ideal and the real again forces itself upon the consciousness. . . . 
The conflict within him at last compels mail to contemplate life on this 
plane as a whole, and the ever- widening disproportion he perceives be- 
tween his powers and possibilities again impels him on toward a higher 
plane. He perceives that not in philanthropic work, not in intellectual 
thought, not in personal virtue, shall his ideal become realized. The 
blooming corolla of fiery activity fades and perishes, shrivelling away 
into an unsightly rag, and man is left once more, heart-sick and bereft 
of all, to seek, if so be he may find it, the way of life and truth. . . . 

SPECULATIONS ON A FOURTH DIMENSION IN SPACE. 

. . . Suppose a man were able to reverse the poles of his attention 
and make what was positive negative and what was negative positive, it is 
conceivable that he might not see this material world and look at . . . 
something else, . . . and if so, what ? Since three dimensions 
exhaust the limits of extension it can be conceived that he might see 
space in three dimensions again, but space of an opposite quality to 
that with which he is habitually familiar. 

In the occasional accidental occurrence of second sight and other in- 
terior senses in some of the phenomena of Spiritualism ; in the traces of 
genuine Occultism which maybe found in the literature, especially the 
sacred literature, of all nations and times we have any record of, we 
have evidence of the possibility of such an alternative space-perception 
of seeing, hearing, etc., in a world not perceptible to the ordinary 
senses. In the language of Occultism the five subtle senses with which 
we perceive the more interior quality of space are called the astral 



174 APPENDIX. 

senses — i.e., clairvoyance, clair-andience, and touch, taste, and smell on 
the astral or etherial plane of matter. 

With a consciousness of space in alternating three dimensional spheres 
alternately cognized through the exterior and interior senses, we might 
infer as a mathematical certainty the existence of a fourth dimension in 
space, although the direct perception of it might still be impossible to 
us. . . . The possibility of such a projection of the consciousness 
into and out of spheres constitutes the stage of human evolution which 
Mr. Betts calls the fourth standing-ground. But the actual realization 
of a four dimensional state of consciousness belongs to the fifth ground, 
which is the positive ground of life, whereas the fourth is only a nega- 
tive and intermediate one. 



THE FOURTH STANDING-GROUND OF LIFE. 

. . . The fourth standing-ground of life, like the second, is a 
negative and reactionary one, the alternation from an objective to a sub- 
jective stage of evolution. 

On the third standing-ground the consciousness had dimly felt the pres- 
ence of another plane of life than the physical. By the time the fourth 
ground is attained the psychical or astral plane becomes a possible ob- 
ject of direct perception. The attention can be directed to or withdrawn 
from either plane. The interior senses are developed as the foundation 
of the higher evolution, as the exterior senses were developed as the 
foundation of the lower evolution ; and as the lower sense was subordi- 
nated to intellectual perception, so the psychic sense becomes the tool 
of the spiritual perception of the fifth ground. But on the fourth 
ground, although the psychic sense may, and indeed must, exist, and con- 
sequently the consciousness is intermediate between a three- and a four- 
dimensional development, being able to cognize either sensuous or 
supersensuous objects, yet the ego feels to have no impulse for the 
exercise of either sense. The hope of realizing his ideal through work 
has faded, and again he lies at the " centre of indifference," again he 
hears the " everlasting nay." 

The third ground was a fruitless attempt of the ego to realize its ideal 
by work, undertaken with and for humanity. The impulses were de- 
termined by a power seemingly external, which was regarded as the 
Divine Will. In the first gush of the ascending activity, when the life 



APPENDIX. 175 

burst forth into flower, it seemed as though perfect satisfaction was to 
be gained on this plane, but as the evolution proceeded, undetermi- 
nateness, deep-seated as the root of life, became increasingly manifest. 
An element of failure accompanied even approximate success. Im- 
perfection was found to mingle with effort of usefulness. An ever- 
widening chasm yawned between the apparent possibility and the act- 
ual accomplishment. The refuge in action failed. Reaction set in 
again, and the corolla that bloomed so brightly faded and withered 
away. . . 

The personality was progressively developed on the earlier standing- 
grounds of life and culminated on the third, but neither in personal 
pleasure nor in personal virtue was the ego able to realize its ideal. 
The fourth ground may be considered as the evolution of negative im- 
personality. The third ground was a state of busy activity, of doing. 
The fourth is a state of sorrowful passivity, of not doing, because the 
desire is no longer to the act, though action continues mechanically, 
because virtue has become instinctive. It may be summed up in one 
word — sacrifice. The ego has given itself up, the personal desires are 
quenched, and the whole desire of the soul is poured forth in a deepen- 
ing cry for knowledge [enlightenment], life. 

Desire completes fruition, and when the soul, from the depth of its 
sorrow and despair, flings itself forth into the infinite in an infinite pas- 
sion of longing, then when the battle of life seems lost, all is won. 
Spiritual perception awakes and the isolated fragment is received back 
into the bosom of the All. In the self-forgetfulness of that supreme 
moment, in the unutterable bliss of that reunion, the sacrifice is accom- 
plished, the self-surrender is complete. Man passes through the gate 
of death into the only true life, which is not egotism, not altruism, but 
eternal unity. This transition has been variously called Regeneration, 
the new Birth, the Beatific vision, Union with the Logos, the 
threshold of Nirvana. 

THE FIFTH STANDING-GROUND OF LIFE. 

In the reaction of the second ground the point or focus had the con- 
tent of the plane — i.e., the activities of the sense life. In the reaction 
of the fourth ground the point or focus has the content of the sphere, 
the entire physical, intellectual, and moral nature, for reason and 



176 APPENDIX. 

virtue have become instinctive, as natural to man as his breathing or 
the beating of his heart. 

As in the transition to the third standing-ground of life the sense- 
perception of the physical ego became the servant, the instrument, of 
the psychic ego, so now in the evolution of the fifth standing-ground 
the metaphysical and ethical perception of the psychic ego, which have 
now developed their appropriate organs, become the servants and in- 
struments of the higher ego — the machinery, so to speak, of the spiritual 
ego, the true being, the I am, which, as it begins to be recognized as the 
true self, makes man more than man, for it is a ray of the great I Am, 
the unposited point which is everywhere and in All. The evolution of 
the first ground is Having or Egotism, of the third is Doing or Altruism. 
The evolution of the fifth ground, the culmination of Humanity, is 
Being or Unity. The three grades of consciousness might be called 
sense-consciousness, soul-consciousness, and spirit or god-conscious- 
ness. 

But though point after point of knowledge has been won, though 
realms of ignorance have been enlightened, and numberless barriers of 
indolence have been overthrown ; though the individual ego has per- 
ceived its oneness with the All, first by faith through revelation on the 
earlier grounds of life, next by reason through inference as its intellect- 
ual faculties expanded on the third ground, and at last by actual per- 
ception through the purified and exalted faculties of the higher self as 
the fifth ground was reached; yet ever beyond the actual point — how- 
ever elevated the position it has attained, and however extended the 
circumference embraced by consciousness — lies the unposited point, the 
Great Unscrutable. The finite cannot compass the infinite. The lesser 
alpha, the individual being, though its identity of substance with the 
great Alpha, the All-being, be disclosed, yet still exists within the cir- 
cumscribing circle of Prakriti. Consciously one with the All in sub- 
stance, it remains consciously separate from the All in form. But since 
the limit of Prakriti, the infinite Omega, is not an actual but an ideal 
limit, within which the actual limits of each form may be for ever and 
ever extended, there lies before the ego the possibility of eternal prog- 
ress, through ever- heightening cycles of objective manifestation, alter' 
nating by reason of polarity with ever intenser states of subjectivity. 
And herein lies the joy and glory of existence, for were it not so, were 
there fixed a hard and fast limit beyond which none could pass, that 



APPENDIX. 177 

would be annihilation. Life would culminate in death, Hope be 
quenched in Despair, and Existence, instead of an everlasting progress 
toward Light, would become the blank darkness of desolation. 

While we remain enchained by our personalities on the lower planes 
of life, scarcely can the imagination prefigure, in faintest outline even, 
the mysteries of so transcendent a plane of life. As the first ground 
was compared to the leaf and the third to the flower, so this may be 
called the season of the fruit, and the fruit has the seed of life in itself 
and is therefore immortal. 

On the fourth ground man becomes negatively impressional, on the 
fifth he becomes positively impressional, for he recognizes his person- 
ality as not himself, but one particular expression of the forces of Nat- 
ure. He does not act — that is, his personality does not act for its own 
sake, for he has passed the stage of personal doing, impelled by per- 
sonal desire. He does not act, but Nature acts in and through him, for 
he has become a conscious part of Nature, and can read her runes and 
knows her laws. He has power over matter, for all things are himself, 
diverse manifestations of the One. He has influence over men, for all 
men are himself, diverse fragments of the great I Am. He draws all 
men up with him, for though he has crossed the threshold of the New 
Life himself, not until all men have entered into it with him can the 
unity be fully consummated by the union of humanity in a common 
subjective life — a life in which, though the centre of consciousness of 
each remains unchanged, the circumference embraces the consciousness 
of all mankind, the four-dimensional unity of the individual spheres of 
consciousness. . . . 

No representation is possible of the form of consciousness on the fifth 
standing-ground of life, although it would be representable if we were 
able to conceive of it. . 

Mr. Betts expects that his theoretical Science of Representation will 
be complemented by a practical Science of Determination, for he be- 
lieves that every natural form is a symbol, and if we understood the 
mystic inscriptions of Nature we might read in every natural form 
some word of Life. 

A Science of Determination would be the foundation of a true system 
of sociology, in which each form of human kind would take its natural 
rank in a great spiritual hierarchy. ... He considers his Science 
of Representation to be the Alpha Science, and that the complementary 



178 APPENDIX. 

Science of Determination will be chiefly the task of women to develop 
it. . . . 

A brief abstract like the present one can give but a meagre conception 
of Mr. Betts' Theories and Diagrams. It will have served its purpose 
if it shows that the studies which Mr. Betts has made toward develop- 
ing a Science of Representation make clear the possibility of using 
mathematics as the handmaid of metaphysical as well as physical sci- 
ence. . . . Mr. Betts puts forth his work as the first step in a new 
direction, or at least the first taken in that direction in our day, and he 
hopes that others abler than himself may follow in the same path and 
geometrize the laws of the universe more successfully than he has 
done. 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS IN APPENDIX (BETTS). 

This frail attempt to solve the problem of life may seem unmeaning, 
bat when we come to understand that all life is an undulatory activity, 
and that color is an infinite array of varying undulations, it may per- 
haps expand into real insight by our tracing the various and infinite 
permutations of this principle through all states and conditions of exist- 
ence in the Garden of Eden, whose flowers are human beings, and thus 
we get back to that Garden from which our ancestor was so abruptly 
expelled. . . . 

Only after close study and almost endless experiment does light sud- 
denly burst in upon the subject. When such occurs I have always felt 
and invariably acknowledged that the flesh has come from a higher 
world. But without the study and experiments I feel sure (I have 
proved it also) that no light would come. [A study of Du Prels 1 ' ' Philos- 
ophy of Mysticism " will convince the student that these sudden flashes 
of light on hidden things come from the interior and higher planes of 
consciousness of our own transcendental ego, opened for the moment to 
self -consciousness by the abstract condition into which the soul had 
fallen through deep interior meditation. The external observation had 
fastened the attention and interest upon the problem involved, which led 
to interior meditation and this to the momentary opening of the higher 
consciousness and its intuitive perception of truth. The glad recogni- 
tion of the truth by the self-consciousness awakes the personal ego to 
itself again in the joy of possession, and the door of the deeper im- 
personal life, which is identified with truth, is closed. This again is a 



APPENDIX. 179 

powerful hint pointing to devout meditation, prayer, and contemplation 
on things of the impersonal and divine life, as the true and certain 
means of opening the higher planes of consciousness and bringing the 
external into co-ordination therewith.] Mr. Betts continues: The idea 
was and is " I and Thou." How to explain this and thereby to explain 
everything was my problem, for I placed this as the central idea of ex- 
istence, the second part of the "I Am that I Am." 

It seems to me the great want in the present day is a practical view 
of life, for you cannot call that life which does not live, and if all could 
see a symbol of their life in every flower that grows (a true symbol, as I 
have been trying to show) they would probably soon see more beauty 
in life than they had done. And if to this the sudden knowledge 
should come of the hidden unity of all, what a ground would they find 
for living outgoing activity ! . . . 

It may be that here and there a distinguished pure soul (already be- 
longing to a higher sphere) obtains entrance into the highest, but what 
about the multitude that has to plod the road thither, concerning whom 
not one is to be lost ? We have invented steam-engines to transport the 
body with speed, and telegraphs to wing our words, but what spiritual 
engines have yet been thought out to speed the soul upward ? . . . 
[We trust the student will find that desideratum met in the specific 
method of induction disclosed in these lessons. Had the mystic fathers 
understood the three planes of consciousness in their normal reciprocal 
relations, and held the ideal of the permanent opening of the tran- 
scendental planes and their normal co ordination with the external and 
sense-plane in the body instead of the ideal of salvation in a future life, 
upon which their whole attention and desire were fastened, they would 
have then solved the problem for all future generations. This they 
have left for us to accomplish, and let us be faithful to the work thus 
bequeathed to us, grateful for what they did ; while recognizing their 
limitations and misdirected efforts, let us complete and perfect what 
they so grandly began.] . . . This is not a poetical term it is 
Science, when I repeat Love is the Substance of all things, the reaction- 
ary activity of the Intelligence, the solid substratum of the Objective 
Universe ; this, too, is not a figure of speech, but an all-embracing real- 
ity, which gives to existence its eternal standing ground and unites all 
together, so that we think we see the same world, hear the same sounds, 
walk the same path, clasp the same hands, when reason tells us it can- 



180 APPENDIX. 

not be so, but each invents or produces that which it thinks, and the 
centre of all our communication is the hidden pavilion of Absolute 
Being. This is clearing the ground for the apprehension of the fact 
that the movements of celestial bodies are. the thinking products of a 
personal intelligence in advance of terrestrial forms. . . . 

I have often stated that I was not looking for leaves or flowers when 
I commenced my studies, and the coincidence of their forms with the 
laws of representation struck me as very remarkable, and then it at 
length became clear that these forms have all along been showing to us 
the secret which all have been trying to arrive at, viz., the laws of 
Being manifested in existence. . . . For Wisdom and Love are the 
two counterparts toward which all are tending, and their apotheosis is 
not of to-day, but forever. 



ff be Gbtfgtfan Ubeogopbg Settee , by John Hamlin Dewey, m.d. 

These books throw a flood of light on the nature and des- 
tiny of the soul, and the yet undeveloped powers and unutilized 
resources of the human spirit. The exposition here given of 
the spiritual constitution and psychic or transcendental powers of 
man, and of the conditions of their immediate development and 
normal exercise, is direct, specific and practical. No reader can 
fail to understand or appreciate it. 

No. I of the series is entitled 

gbe TKHaE, tbe ffratb, anD tbe Xife. 

A Hand-book of Christian Theosophy, Healing and Psychic Culture. 

This book of over 400 pages gives a lucid exposition of the 
Theosophy and Occultism of the New Testament, and a compre- 
hensive analysis and philosophy of mental and faith healing, with 
such specific instruction for practical application that none 
need fail to grasp or follow them. Many have healed them- 
selves and become successful healers of others from reading 
this book. It gives, also, direct, specific and complete analysis 
and exposition of the psychic powers of the sixth sense, Psy- 
chometry, Clairvoyance, Mental Telegraphy, etc., and the laws 
and conditions of their normal development and exercise. Some 
remarkable illustrations of the successful cultivation of these 
powers are given. It is a splendid introduction to the study of 
the New or Transcendental Pyschology. Letters of grateful ap- 
preciation are being constantly received from its readers. 

No. II of the series is entitled 

Gbe flSatbwag of tbe Spirit 

A Guide to Inspiration, Illumination and Divine Realization. 
This book cf over 300 pages is devoted specifically to the 
study of the spiritual nature, sublime destiny and divine possibili- 
ties of man as a child of God. It gives a key to the Christ-gospel of 
the kingdom of God on earth, and draws a sharp contrast between 
his doctrine of God and man, and those involved in the other great 
religions of the world. All students and thinkers, whatever their 
creed or philosophy of life, should read this book. The humblest 
seeker may here find the key to his own spiritual emancipation and 
illumination, while the advanced disciple will find helpful sugges- 
tions, strength and inspiration in its pages. It shows the relation 
between the latest suggestions of science and the deepest experi- 
ences and loftiest inspirations of prophets, seers and saints, and 
reconciles the most rigid demands of the intellect with the deepest 
yearnings of the spiritual nature. 

No III., soon to be issued, unfolds the specific nature and 
legitimate sphere of the psychic powers of the sixth sense, their 
cultivation and exercise, and the development of a true occult 
science. 

No. IV. (in preparation) specifically unfolds "The Law of 
the Perfect Life," as applied to individual experience and the 
new social order of the kingdom of God on earth. 



THE DAWNING DAY 

AN EXPOSITION 

Of the Principles, Work, and Method of 

the Brotherhood of the Spirit and 

School of the Christ 



JUST OUT. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

"THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES." 

Pronounced by some his best Work. 

CONDENSED, GRAPHIC, AND FULL OF MERIT. 
A BOOK FOR EVERYBODY. 



Paper, 30 Cents, 



Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price. Address 

E. L. C. DEWEY, 

in West 68th Street, - New York. 




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